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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26718472">Pavor Nocturnus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helen1969/pseuds/Helen1969'>Helen1969</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Et in Arcadia, Ego [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain Harlock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:55:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>34,749</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26718472</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helen1969/pseuds/Helen1969</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Several years ago the planet Filament vanished when a dark matter wave hit it. Now a Galaxy Railways survey vessel has gone missing in the same area of inter-galactic space, and the SDF vessel Sirius  - with Harlock's son Wataru on board - has been dispatched to investigate. When the Sirius also goes missing, the Arcadia is the only ship that can help... </p><p>Based (loosely) on the GE999 story "Yurei Sekai Filament" (Ghost Planet Filament). Set a couple of years after Black Corsair</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Et in Arcadia, Ego [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/456619</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Who is the third who walks always beside you?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When I count, there are only you and I together</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But when I look ahead up the white road</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There is always another one walking beside you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded</em>
</p><p>
  <em>TS Elliott "The Waste Land"</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>Planet Filament, 31st December 2987</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>Fireworks lit up the night sky, providing the assembled crowds with a sky full of stars, if only for a fleeting, ephemeral moment. Cheers rang out through the town square, not quite drowned out by the series of explosions that accompanied the ostentatious display. Overlooking the proceedings from a balcony festooned with bunting and lights, the town's leaders, resplendent in their oh-so-new mechanical bodies, waved to the people gathered below, fake smiles plastered upon even more fake faces. Hollow men, hollowed out, scooping out what made them human until only the shell remained - and not even that, because once empty, what use was the shell? It too could be replaced, and so hollow men filled hollow shells and lived hollow lives...</p><p>From the sidelines of the proceedings, a woman - still in the body she'd been born in, one that showed every day of its thirty something years and more, turned her face away from the display with a sigh that didn't even come close to expressing the emotions that ran through her head. Disgust. Despair.</p><p>Envy...</p><p>Because to be hollowed out was to be rid of the pain of existence. Of fear, death, hunger, loss, hope...</p><p>'Mama?'</p><p><em>Love</em>...</p><p>She looked down at the small figure next to her, one tiny hand in hers, large eyes; larger in a thin face that didn't get anywhere near enough to eat, no matter how she scrimped, saved, scrounged and scavenged.</p><p>You couldn't hollow out a child. What would be left?</p><p>'Can we stay and watch?'</p><p>'No dear. We have to get home, it's not safe.'</p><p>There are stories… of the Count and his cronies leaving their magnificent palace on nights like this, when people were relaxed and drunk… not being careful. Hunting, said the rumours. Trophies for the walls of their palaces. Hollow men trying in vain to fill up the emptiness inside of them.</p><p>She shivered, and not just because Filament's dim sun, so far away from the nearest galaxy's comforting glow, did little to warm the planet during its short day.</p><p>Groups of revellers pushed past them as she pressed herself against the wall, not even noticing them. 'We can watch from the window,' she promised, as she tugged her child's hand, trying to get the girl's attention.</p><p>The large digital screen in the town centre lit up with numbers and the crowd began to chant: 10...9...8…</p><p>'Mama!'</p><p>She looked up to see what the child was pointing to.</p><p>The sky was getting darker.</p><p>Which, she thought, shouldn't really be possible. There were no stars, so distant and lonely that night was always a true night. At least, no stars that mattered. Filament's nearest neighbours were the relics of dead and dying suns. No human eyes could see the occasional twinkle of those fading stars. Idly, she wondered if the eyes of the mechanised men could. And if so, would they even care?</p><p>5… 4… 3…</p><p>The count never reached the end. There was no flash of light, no explosion, no debris, no time for anyone to cry out. The lonely planet circling the forlorn, abandoned star vanished in the falling shadows.</p><p>
  <em>This was the way the world ended</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This was the way the world ended.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This was the way the world ended.</em>
</p><p>Filament's three tiny satellites kept orbiting the empty space where the planet had once been, endlessly circling in an eternal gyre.</p><hr/><p>Time passed.</p><p>It always does.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>SDF cruiser "Sirius"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>2999</em>
</p><p>'Yûki! Ho! Yûki-kun!'</p><p>Wataru flinched as the speaker bellowed at a volume that would do credit to a bull elephant in heat. Frankly, the speaker also moved in a similar manner. Nathaniel tended to charge through life - and anything in his way - with the same casual disregard for life and limb as he had for anyone else's hearing. Case in point: the slab of muscle masquerading as an arm that landed around Wataru's broad but slim shoulders. 'Nate.' He winced as his fellow classman's thick tail slapped against his lower leg. 'Ow…'</p><p>'Sorry. Keep forgetting.' Nate curled his tail over his arm to keep it out of the way of unwary classmates. A heavy-worlder with a chthonian mother, he embodied the best (worst?) of both sides of his heritage. Add in a personality that would make a red setter look depressed, and the result was a walking disaster area. An annoyingly chirpy one to boot.</p><p>'Try harder, Nate. It's like having a frisky Doberman around with no social skills.' He tried and failed to wriggle out from underneath the thick arm that almost had him in a headlock. 'Any reason why you feel the need to try and flatten and deafen me in the space of two minutes?'</p><p>'You got called into this morning's briefing…' Nate said archly as they walked towards the bridge. He did however move his arm and settled for walking beside Wataru, having to jog to keep up with the taller youth's long stride.</p><p>'Yes…'</p><p>'So? Why you? A sudden promotion I didn't know about?'</p><p>Wataru snorted. 'Please. It's just about the mission we're being sent on. No big deal - I just have a background that they thought might be relevant.'</p><p>'Relevant? How come? You're from some little dusty backwater way out past Lar Metal, aren't you?'</p><p>'Family stuff. Look, the captain's briefing everyone in a few minutes, and he won't thank me for talking out of turn, okay?'</p><p>Nate sighed. 'Sometimes, Yûki, you can be a bit of a stick in the mud, you know that?'</p><p>Wataru shrugged off the criticism, and ignored his classmate's attempts to squeeze the story out of him. There really wasn't much he could say anyway… Not without getting into explanations about just <em>why </em>his captain felt <em>he </em>might have something to contribute on the subject of dark matter…</p><p>'Oh - hey… someone's playing silly buggers again!' Nate pointed at the wall.</p><p>Some wag had been playing around with the wanted posters that flashed up on the board outside the bridge again. Because there, at eye level, larger than life, was his great-grandfather's wanted poster, with the standard Alliance "Wanted Dead or Alive" replaced with "preferably naked and delivered to the women's locker room" emblazoned across it instead.</p><p>'Well at least it's not Dad…' Wataru muttered under his breath.</p><p>'Eh?'</p><p>'Nothing. Come on, we don't want to be late.' He tugged at the long back coat that still felt too constricting, ran his fingers through his barely regulation dark hair, and strode as confidently onto the bridge as he could, Nate trailing in his wake.</p><hr/><p>Captain Todo barely acknowledged the two cadets as they entered the bridge - strolled nonchalantly in the case of young Yûki, and stomped (Nate). Although he couldn't help but be aware of the former. For all his youth, Yûki had a way of being noticed when he entered a room - a presence far too magnetic for his nineteen years. But then, given that he'd been made privy to the boy's sealed personnel file when he'd been assigned… "Why me" was a thought that went through his head almost daily.</p><p>It wasn't that the cadet was a poor student, or crewman. Quite the opposite. Respectful, intelligent, a crack shot, mad piloting skills and a born (ring) leader… never disobeyed an order, top of his class… planned on marrying his childhood sweetheart once he'd graduated.</p><p>Too perfect, Todo thought, and wondered why - for the upmteenth time - that bothered him. Or what the hell he sometimes felt he was waiting for - some crack in that too-handsome, too good for this world façade? He caught sight of the youth watching him from under that shock of hair that short of a buzz cut was never going to stay put, and saw the amusement in those eyes mixed with more than a little disappointment. As though the boy could read his mind.</p><p>But he didn't have to, did he? That file was sealed for a reason, after all. Of course he'd know that anyone who knew who he was would be waiting for him to screw up, to show the world that the apple didn't fall far from the tree.</p><p>It wouldn't do to explain to the boy he'd agreed to take him <em>because </em>he knew his father. That his worry wasn't that he'd screw up because - drumroll - he was Captain Harlock's son, but because he seemed to be trying too hard to distance himself from that reputation and the expectations that went with it. Can't be easy, he thought, turning back to face the rest of his crew, his newest cadet only just visible out of the corner of his eye, trying to live a normal life when your family is anything but.</p><p>But given their current assignment, that "anything but" might actually be a plus…</p><p>He cleared his throat. 'If I can have your attention?'</p><p>Silence slammed into the murmuring hubbub of chatter amongst the assembled crew. 'Some of you will be aware that we received new orders this morning from HQ, directly from Commander Shura herself. An engineering team surveying for a new hyperspace track between the Milky Way and the Greater Magellanic Cloud failed to make a scheduled check-in three days ago. As the closest ship, we've been ordered to divert to investigate. Since we're on a training run…' he glanced around deliberately making eye contact with the class of twenty cadets he'd taken on in lieu of his regular crew - 'We're just on a reconnaissance run. Any hostilities we call it in and get the hell out. No heroics…'</p><p>His gaze lingered on Yûki momentarily and passed him over with a hidden smile when the youth's head jerked up into an even stiffer posture. 'There have been reports of some anomalies in that area since a rogue system vanished about twenty years ago, so we play it safe. It's possible they just got into difficulties. You have your assigned stations. Go to them. All hands prepare for IN-SKIP.'</p><p>He sat heavily in the captain's chair, and watched his crew move smoothly into place. Even the cadets, on their first real posting, calm and well drilled.</p><p>He didn't miss the sideways glance Yûki gave him as the boy took his station at navigation, his usual nav officer at his side guiding him through the calculations - not that the kid needed much teaching. The little look that wondered why the hell he hadn't mentioned that the system that had been destroyed twenty years ago had been wiped out by a wave of dark matter from an unknown source...</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Filament</em>
</p><p>The <em>Sirius </em>exited IN-SKIP a safe distance from the projected co-ordinates of the "lost" system - a standard precaution when expecting trouble.</p><p>Wataru stared at his screen and frowned. 'Well that makes no sense…'</p><p>'Cadet?' Todo leaned forward in his chair.</p><p>Wataru's fingers danced across the keypad as he tried to make sense of the readings. 'Our records say the system was destroyed - but I'm not seeing any trace of debris. In fact…' He brought up the colour-adjusted image from the forward sensors on the main viewer. 'According to every sensor we have, the planet and its star are gone - the only thing we can actually see in the visible spectrum is this.' He waved a hand towards the screen. 'And that makes no sense at all.'</p><p>At the weapons station, his classmate, Guy Lawrence, frowned. 'Its empty space…'</p><p>'Not exactly,' Wataru replied. 'Look closer.'</p><p>Guy peered, then leaned back in his seat with a shrug. "You've lost me.'</p><p>'Clearly,' Todo stated flatly, causing the fair-haired cadet to flush slightly. 'Because if the planet's gone, Lawrence, what the hell are those two moons orbiting?'</p><p>'Hologrammes?' Guy hazarded. 'It's not unheard of…' he shared a knowing smirk with Wataru.</p><p>'Nothing on the scanners indicating any signals of that sort,' the comms officer called out. 'Something big enough to blanket a whole planet - as the Gaia Sanction did with Earth - gives off a lot of energy. That's why the interdicted zone around the planet was so big.'</p><p>'Besides,' Wataru added, 'Why bother all the way out here? It's only because the intergalactic railroad to the GMC is passing through this sector that anyone was looking at it.'</p><p>'On which note, Yamadera - any sign of our missing scout ship or its emergency beacon?' Todo addressed his comms officer.</p><p>'No sir. Nothing, and I've beefed up reception as high as it will go…'</p><p>'Cadet Yûki?' Todo gestured to the comms station. 'Those adjustments you suggested?'</p><p>With an apologetic murmur to Yamadera, Wataru slid into the comms officer's vacated seat and began to type. 'We had this on the… on my father's ship a few years ago… they came across a rift in space/time with a graveyard of ships in it dating back to the Homecoming War. Toch… the chief engineer came up with a way to scan for anomalies, especially ones…' he hesitated, and looked over his shoulder at his captain.</p><p>Todo let out a deep breath. 'There's a suspicion that dark matter might be involved, people. Hence our caution. Yûki?'</p><p>'Almost there sir…'</p><p>The display on the main screen changed to a sickly green, concentrated around the location where the planet should have been sitting.</p><p>'Damn…' Todo breathed softly. 'I'd hoped we were wrong…'</p><p>'What the ever-loving…' Lawrence stared at the screen and then leaned towards Wataru. 'Any ideas?' he whispered.</p><p>'Yeah. We get the hell out of here on the double and someone calls dad…' Wataru whispered back. 'Something dropped that planet right out of our space time… it's still there, but it isn't. There are only two ships capable of dealing with that kind of shit, and one of them's all the way out near Andromeda…'</p><p>'Lawrence! Yûki! Either it's important enough to share with the rest of the crew, or it can wait until you're off duty.'</p><p>'Sorry sir,' they muttered in unison. Their backs to their commanding officer, they shared a conspiratorial grin. Guy and his sister had been brought up alternating between Mistral - their parents homeworld - and Tabito. The boys went way back together, Guy being the only one of Wataru's classmates privy to his family history. Guy's father, Rick, had served on the <em>Arcadia</em> for several years before his death a couple of years ago.</p><p>'I just suggested we might be better off putting in a call to someone with more experience in dealing with dark matter,' Mamoru suggested.</p><p>'Whilst I like your thinking,' Todo drawled with only a trace of sarcasm, 'asking for help from either one of the two most notorious outlaws in known space might not be a habit the SDF wants to get into.'</p><p>'Never usually stops them,' Guy muttered, with a sidelong glance to Wataru, who was hard pressed to hide a smile. It was after all one of his father's pet peeves that anything the regular authorities couldn't handle tended to end up in his lap. Or that of the Millennial Thieves, who technically weren't outlaws, but operated in the murky, barely legal fringes of the galactic mercenary companies.</p><p>'Lawrence… since you and your partner in crime appear to have your own opinions as to how to handle this, you can have the reconnaissance flight. Take one of the two-man fighters, and survey the area from the vicinity of the closest of those two satellites - but mark me - no further. One quick pass, and back to the barn.'</p><p>'Well gee thanks, Guy,' Wataru muttered out of the corner of his mouth. 'Way to go putting the pair of us in the firing line…' Out loud he asked: 'Why not a drone, sir?'</p><p>'The sensors are giving conflicting readings, cadet. You've got the background in this area, I'm hoping you can help interpret what's out there. But my order stands, gentlemen - no heroics.'</p><p>Yes sir!' Both youths stood and snapped off sharp salutes before heading for the hangar at a steady trot.</p><p>Once out of sight of the bridge they slowed to a jog. 'I don't know what you're getting pissed at me for,' Guy told him as they made their way down the main corridor. 'He was going to send you anyway…'</p><p>'And yet - you keep telling me I'm the one who runs headfirst into trouble without thinking… and here <em>you</em> are dragging <em>me</em> into it for a change…'</p><p>Guy smirked. 'Now you know how it feels for the rest of us when we have to run to keep up. Relax, Wataru - I've got your back. Be like the old days back home. All we're missing is your dick of a brother… Ow!' he rubbed his arm and glared at Wataru. 'Oh, c'mon, Yûki - even you have to admit Mamoru's turned being a smart-mouthed prick into an artform…'</p><p>'Takes one to know one,' Wataru smirked back, avoiding the elbow heading towards his midriff. He lengthened his stride, forcing Guy to do likewise, until they reached the hangar, where the two-man space jet waited for them, an irritated engineer tapping his toe on the gridded floor.</p><p>'So… I guess asking your sister out on a date…' Guy said breezily as he vaulted into the REO's seat behind Wataru.</p><p>'Over. My. Cold. Dead. Body.'</p><p>'Really? Because what's not to like? I'm tall, dark, handsome, drop dead gorgeous, have great prospects, and for the win, capable of stringing entire sentences together, which is more than can be said of most of the idiots she's surrounded by.'</p><p>'You've shagged your way through half the class,' Wataru pointed out, not unreasonably he thought.</p><p>'Five. Five girls in the entire semester. The only reason you haven't is you're a prude…'</p><p>'I have a fiancée, in case you'd forgotten…'</p><p>'Exactly my point. Prude.'</p><p>'Loyal.'</p><p>'So's my dog… but that's at home, and I'm here.'</p><p>Wataru waited, his grin hidden by his respirator.</p><p>'You know... I didn't mean…'</p><p>'Guy?'</p><p>'Yeah?'</p><p>'You know the line about when you've lost sight of daylight?'</p><p>The canopy started its slow descent, not before they both heard the exasperated mutterings from the flight engineer.</p><p>'So… Nami?' Guy asked chirpily as they taxied towards the open airlock.</p><p>'Fine. I'll ask dad.' Wataru wished he had a view of the backseat as he heard Guy making choking noises over the comms. He started whistling softly as he banked the plane and blasted away from the <em>Sirius</em>, towards the forlorn little rocks that orbited the missing planet, and grinned again when he heard the distressed yelp from behind his seat. 'What's wrong?' He asked disingenuously as Guy mouthed obscenities into the comms - thankfully not broadcasting back to the ship.</p><p>'You're a fucking lunatic!'</p><p>It was impossible to resist. 'Sorry - I thought you were missing Mamoru?'</p><p>'Bastard. Next time, I'm flying.'</p><p>'Not if we want to get there sometime this month,' Wataru replied dryly.</p><p>'Some of us like to arrive in one piece,' Guy retorted. 'Bloody well shows who taught you to fly - dad always said your parents flew like a couple of nutters.'</p><p>'Quit bellyaching and give me my readouts,' Wataru advised him. 'You're starting to sound like Ali.'</p><p>'Oh. Now you're going too far,' Guy told him. 'I can go off you…' But he flicked on the heads-up display in front of his seat and began an all-systems search of the area. 'Readings are all over the place, but the programme you put in from comms has been uploaded. Not that it's helping much… it's like picking your way through a Mistral fog at night. I'm picking up parts of what might be the survey ship's signal though…'</p><p>'Co-ordinates?'</p><p>'If I ignore my eyes and go with where the orbit of that little dustball says the planet should be? Dead ahead. And stay outside its orbit, flyboy - you heard the captain.'</p><p>At the controls, Wataru frowned as the little craft bucked under his hands. 'We're well outside - but something's got hold of us. It's like something kicked her in the backside!'</p><p>In his left ear, Guy's language would have made the crew of the Arcadia blush. <em>Well, some of them</em>… 'You're telling me? Can't you keep her straight?'</p><p>'What do you think I'm trying to do… Anything on the sensors?'</p><p>'I got nothing… wait… gravity fluctuations, and they're off the charts! Yûki! I think…'</p><p>'Way ahead of you!' Wataru tried to pull a hard turn in the craft, piling on the burn to break free and head back to the ship. 'Call it in!' He fought the controls, but the fighter wasn't responding. On the main comms, Guy was sending out a mayday, giving their location, but the only thing coming back was static.</p><p>Then the engines died, followed a heartbeat later by the instrumentation. Lights out, dead in space, the little fighter spiralled towards the heart of a green, flickering fog that billowed out of nowhere to envelop first the fighter, then the Sirius. Then as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.</p><p>So were the ships.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Planet Tabito</em>
</p><p>The little raman shop stood in the middle of a row of small shops on a dusty side street, the sign above the door proclaiming "Galaxy Ramen" in Japanese and Standard, in elegant calligraphy on a sign that still looked so fresh the passersby might even suspect the paint was still wet. Which given that a stepladder had been moved only a few minutes earlier, was indeed the case.</p><p>A tall dark-haired young man whose amiable good looks were enough to cause a susceptible young lady cyclist to wobble on her way to lunch stood across the street, arms folded across a dark blue flightsuit and nodded approvingly as a youth about half his age dodged a couple of bikes to cross the road in a long-legged jog to reach his side. A smudge of dark paint on the side of his nose and several splashes on tatty beige coveralls told their own story.</p><p>'Nice job.'</p><p>'Thanks, makes it all worthwhile.' Daisuke punched his older brother on the arm. 'How come <em>you</em> weren't the one up the damn ladder?'</p><p>'Delegation.' Blaze deadpanned. He smiled at his kid brother, realising for the first time he didn't have to look down to do so. 'Damn, kiddo - you're shooting up like a beansprout!' At seventeen, Daisuke was almost the same height as his older brother, and probably still had some growing to do. He said as much, adding cheekily: 'Though hopefully not outwards... ' giving his brother's stomach a playful jab. Blaze swatted the back of his head, and smoothed the black t-shirt he wore which was - as always pulled tight over washboard firm abs.</p><p>'When you've got some muscle, we'll talk, sprout,' he growled fondly.</p><p>'He's got you there Dai!' a feminine voice called out from across the street. Both men turned to watch the speaker - a girl about Daisuke's age, tall and slender with long light brown hair and blue eyes, stroll across to greet them, smiling at both of them.</p><p>'I think she fancies you,' Daisuke whispered archly into his brother's ear just before she reached them. Blaze jumped, frowned at his brother, and shook his head as the youth winked at him. 'Lar knows why… I mean - you're the same age as her father…' he mercifully stopped speaking as the girl stood in front of them, her smile fading slightly as she looked from Blaze to Daisuke and back again.</p><p>'Something wrong?'</p><p>'Nothing, nothing…' Daisuke stepped forward and bussed her noisily on the lips, jumping back with a laugh as she glared at him and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.</p><p>'Eugh, Dai. Are you still practicing on your pillow?'</p><p>'How else will I learn?' he asked, making soulful eyes at her. 'Mamoru won't let me…'</p><p>'Maybe he should. He has the worst taste in women. Look, I love you like a brother, Dai. That's why I don't want my father to shoot you. Which he will if he catches you slobbering all over my face.'</p><p>'If Harlock doesn't, I will,' Blaze promised, giving his brother a baleful glare, which was, as always, shrugged off. 'Nami. I thought you were with Kanna?' He gave her a chaste peck on the cheek when she tilted her head towards him and tapped below her cheekbone with a finger. 'That, oh bratty brother of mine, is how it's done.'</p><p>'No wonder you never get laid,' Dai replied, with a wink to Nami, who laughed at him.</p><p>'I <em>was </em>with your sister, but I have had about as much dress fitting as I can take for one day. In fact, probably for the rest of my life.'</p><p>Blaze eyed up her cut-off jeans and crop top, which between them left far too much midriff and leg exposed for his peace of mind, let alone her father's. She stuck her tongue out of him before he could say anything and continued: 'Whose bright idea was it for Hannibal to tell everyone about his first wedding? My very sweet friend and future sister in truth is driving us all nuts…' She turned to look at the paintwork across the road. 'Nice work, by the way - she'll love it.'</p><p>'Thanks,' Daisuke told her. 'All my own work, since lazybones here couldn't be arsed to break a sweat, and Zee vanishes with his partners in crime anytime someone mentions work to be done…'</p><p>'I supervised,' Blaze said loftily. 'And fitted out the kitchen and bought all the new crockery…'</p><p>'Could have just moved all the stuff from the old shop,' Daisuke pointed out. 'I don't see why we had to move all the way out here anyway?'</p><p>Nami laid a hand on his arm and patted it. 'There there, that's why the rest of us do all the thinking, Dai. Your evil auntie only left you alone there because of your mom. Besides, after the underground control centre flooded last year and you had to backfill, it wasn't really much use any more, was it?' She aimed this last question at Blaze, who nodded briefly.</p><p>'I'd rather persuade Kanna and Wataru to relocate totally, but there's no guarantee Promethium wouldn't try something if Kanna was off-planet, and Wataru's job's going to take him away a lot. Here we can always have someone watching, and Promethium won't attack Tabito.' He glanced at Dai, who was watching him, arms folded across his chest, and grinning. 'Don't you have some wallpaper to put up?' he asked pointedly. 'It won't hang itself…'</p><p>'Bloody well should,' Dai mumbled. 'Thirty-first bloody century and they can't make self-hanging wallpaper? Don't we have nanotech now?'</p><p>'The nanotech that can be compromised by machinners?' Nami asked sweetly. He grumbled something incoherent at her and slouched across the street, hands in pockets. She smiled up at Blaze. 'He really doesn't think things through, does he?'</p><p>'He's young. He'll learn.' He smiled down at her. 'How is Wataru?'</p><p>'On his first assignment. Last time we spoke he was about to ship out.'</p><p>'How's that working out?'</p><p>She pulled a face. 'About as well as can be expected. Thankfully only a handful of people know who our dad is, otherwise he'd be in it right up to his neck…'</p><p>Blaze matched her rueful sigh. 'Harlock's timing wasn't great, but I don't think Layla will hold it against him for long… though why he felt the need to dismantle that dimensional tunneling project is still a mystery. He won't talk about it…'</p><p>'Dismantle? Is that a new euphemism for "totally trashed"?' Nami shook her head. 'All I know is it's something to do with whatever went down on Herise last year, and that Time Castle…'</p><p>'Mamoru muttered something about seeing something there… before he was conveniently shipped off to Oedo's new pet project along with…'</p><p>'Almost everyone my age that I grew up with?' she scuffed the dusty pavement with one toe. 'I just have your idiot brother for company…' She fluttered her eyelashes and beamed up at him. 'And you, of course…' When he flushed and took a step back, she pouted. 'Really, Blaze? Relax. You're as old as my dad for Lar's sake…'</p><p>'Funny,' he drawled. 'That's what Daisuke just told me…'</p><p>She giggled. 'Really? He snitched on me?' she linked her arm in his and let him have the full force of a smile that she'd inherited from both parents. 'Did he also tell you that I'm female and have a pulse? Because I'm pretty sure that "fancies the arse off his big brother" doesn't require an awful lot more than that.'</p><p>'You,' he told her firmly, 'need to stop unleashing that smile on unwary bystanders. And I'm not sure I'm comfortable having my backside the subject of discussion by a young woman I used to babysit…'</p><p>'Oh, so having it actually <em>fondled </em>by a young woman who was only actually "born" two years <em>after </em>I was is okay then? she asked sweetly. He tripped over a pebble and turned to glare at her. 'Oh please, Blaze - <em>everyone </em>knows you've been finding excuses to head over to Ventimiglia to see Galene… You can't find <em>that </em>many problems to ask Grampy's advice about since he retired…' She nudged him in the side with her elbow. 'You know, you might start wanting to be a bit nicer to Wataru… before you find out what it's like having Grampy's Cosmo Eagle poking into your back as he marches <em>you </em>up the aisle…'</p><p>'I will never,' he told her, '<em>ever</em> get used to having the great and terrible founder of my organisation answering to "grampy" by you brats…'</p><p>She grinned. 'Ianthe's little girl does it as well and you don't want to even go there wondering how awkward <em>that </em>must be…'</p><p>Since Ventimiglia was home to a large (and ever increasing) colony of rescued clones, one of which - the aforementioned Ianthe - was Hannibal's long-deceased wife, happily married to a clone of one of his nephew's grandsons, no, Blaze really didn't. It made his head hurt on a good day, and he was Lar Metallian born and bred. That he was still working on a budding relationship with one of the clones of Hannibal's <em>daughters </em>was just the icing on an increasingly complicated cake… especially since both her biological father and her adopted one were protective.</p><p><em>Very </em>protective.</p><p>But before he could comment, Daisuke came barrelling out of the shop, waving frantically at them. He dashed across the road with scant regard for his safety, being narrowly missed by one of the dusty trucks from the mine, the driver of which honked and shouted something mercifully incoherent out of the window at him. He slewed to a stop beside his brother, fielded by a strong arm. 'Blaze!'</p><p>'Last time I looked… what is it?'</p><p>'Destiny… on the warp radio. There's been an accident.'</p><p>Blaze wasn't one to get into an immediate panic - he'd been trained too well by both parents and by Hannibal. He placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. 'Breathe, little brother. Slowly. What, where and who?'</p><p>'Commander Layla… says she needs to find Harlock - he's not answering the warp comms.' Daisuke glanced at Nami and his face crumpled into misery. 'Nami… It's the <em>Sirius </em>- they've lost contact with her.'</p><p>Nami's little wordless cry was the only outward sign of her distress. Blaze gave her a brief hug, and started back across the road, both youngsters in tow. 'Blaze…' she said, in an anguished whisper.</p><p>'Shinpai shinaide, Nami-chan. Let me do the talking - facts first, then we can work out what to do.' She nodded numbly, and he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.</p><p>'It must be bad though,' he heard her say to Daisuke, as his longer legs took him ahead of the pair. 'I mean, if they're calling for papa?'</p><p>Rather more to the point, Blaze kept to himself, the timing couldn't be worse, since the commander and Harlock had gotten into it after Harlock had shut down the Galaxy Railway's interdimensional tunneling project, designed to create shortcuts along some of the projected routes for the new express line. Urgently trying to get hold of Harlock meant there was something hinky in the wind that the SDF couldn't handle, and <em>that </em>tended to suggest it was dark matter related. That it <em>was </em>urgent? Well… at least that suggested there was still hope…</p><p>He crossed his fingers out of sight of his brother and Nami, and sprinted ahead of them into the radio room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Earth</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Palace of Queen Rafflesia II</em>
</p><p>
  <em>More precisely… her bedchamber.</em>
</p><p>Cleo ran her hands along the broad, muscular back of the man poised above her, bracing his hands alongside her shoulders, until her fingers found the sensitive skin in the dimple at the base of his spine. The contraction that stimulated sent him deeper inside, and she arched her back to take him. She smiled into dark brown eyes that were almost - though not entirely - obscured by a tousled fall of golden hair, a dramatic contrast to his turquoise blue skin.</p><p>'Wicked, wicked wench,' he said softly, leaning closer to capture her lips with his. 'I should just haul you back to my harem…'</p><p>'Try it,' she replied dryly, 'And just see how quickly your diplomatic overtures fall apart…'</p><p>He laughed, and the effort brought them both to a swift conclusion to the leisurely hour they'd spent. Unlike a lot of men she'd known, he didn't uncouple immediately, but took his time, murmuring something incomprehensible in his own language as he eased free of her, still trailing light kisses and playing a symphony with his fingers on her pale skin. 'If only all diplomatic missions were so pleasurable…'</p><p>'I think your particular area of expertise would be somewhat wasted on Promethium,' Cleo said with a bell-like laugh. 'Or that pompous, sadistic green bastard with the furry eyebrows. I, however, will not yield my requests for aid in your galaxy simply because you are a delight in both the bedroom and around the dinner table.'</p><p>'Your description of Zworder might just make Talan's day... ' he replied with a smile. 'I must remember to quote you on that.'</p><p>That smile had a way of making his handsome face seem innocently boyish. He could - and frequently did when it suited him - pass himself off as a man in his late twenties or early thirties, but could add at least two decades onto that that she knew of, and she suspected the truth was somewhat higher. He was, however, a man who liked to keep everyone - even friends - guessing, and his playful demeanour hid a ruthless determination often only tempered by a fierce loyalty to those friends, and to his own people. 'Ben… whilst I appreciate the personal visit, you could have conducted this over the warp - or sent a representative.'</p><p>'<em>Promethium</em> gets a representative,' he told her, cupping one small breast in a large blue hand, then rolling the nipple gently between finger and thumb until it peaked, taut and needy. 'You, my dear Cleome, deserve my full and undivided attention… Besides - it amuses me that it winds Talan up to breaking point when I go wandering. Last message he sent over the warp he was almost babbling… in between dire warnings of insurrections and rebellion if I didn't head back home instantly, and warnings of assassinations and other dark deeds aimed at my imperially majestic person.'</p><p>'Is he right?'</p><p>'He over-reacts. It's his only flaw. I've got three body-doubles for personal appearances, and a highly competent staff who know how to handle things. I pay all of them an extortionate amount, and in all honesty Talan could do the job just as well if he were so inclined. Besides, since they never know when I'll be back looking over their shoulders, everyone tends to behave themselves.</p><p>'So trusting…'</p><p>Since he wasn't sure if she meant him or his advisors, he went with the former on principle. 'I reward loyalty and competence. The penalty for everything else isn't worth it. Besides - I'm adorable, I take care of my people, and would - and have - put my own life on the line for them and they know it.' At her raised eyebrow he smiled enigmatically. 'Oh. You're thinking I must be horrendously naive…?'</p><p>'I'm thinking you're either that, or so terrifyingly good at what you do, that your confidence <em>isn't </em>misplaced… and if that's the case, I'd really hate to be your enemy.'</p><p>'Funnily enough, I get that a lot.' He kissed the tip of her nose and rolled off the bed, reaching for his pants, where they'd landed on the floor earlier. 'I learned the hard way how <em>not</em> to rule.' He handed her a length of blue chiffon.</p><p>'And now I'm wondering where you learned your negotiating style,' she teased, taking her chiton from him. She stood gracefully, and let him arrange it around her with as much care and attention as any of her handmaids.</p><p>'That,' he said, placing a kiss on the base of her neck, 'is entirely self-taught.' He took the hairbrush from her side table and began to brush her waist length hair with delicate, well-practiced strokes. 'How effective it is remains to be seen once we leave here and adjourn to the negotiating table.'</p><p>'A pity,' she said lightly. 'Once we leave this room we have to become Rafflesia and Dessler again…'</p><p>'Always give the audience what they expect to see,' he told her. 'Even the Mazone are not immune to the civilised niceties. The fact that we're both capable of reaching an amicable agreement without the mindless tedium and fluttering of various committees around to clutter up the sordid business seems to pass said committees by…' He coiled her hair into a simple but elegant wreath around her head. 'There. Though I have to admit, I rather like the idea of my cabinet having to deal with yours... '</p><p>'I'd put my money on mine, to coin a human phrase,' she replied with a cheeky smile.</p><p>'So would I - the rampant testosterone generated by my generals wouldn't last five minutes when faced with that sea of smart, beautiful women. In fact, if you ever want to swap…' he continued, plastering a soulful look on his face. She rolled her eyes.</p><p>'Your bed, you lie on it,' she told him. She sat back down on the edge of the bed and watched with unashamed interest whilst he finished dressing. A powder blue silk shirt contrasted beautifully with both his dark blue breeches and his turquoise blue skin. Having pulled his boots on he reached for the dark blue cloak that went over the ensemble, and she helped him with the heavy folds, clipped into place over his left shoulder. She noticed he left the stiff, military jacket over the back of the bench it had landed on, in favour of allowing that light shirt to expose an impressive amount of muscular chest. <em>Playing to an audience indeed</em>... She snorted silently and handed him his gunbelt, fastening it around his waist and settling it against his slim hips. The gun in the holster she recognised with a start as one of the <em>Arcadia's </em>Cosmo Dragoons. 'I'm amazed he let you keep that,' she said.</p><p>He smiled wolfishly. 'Actually he sent it <em>after </em>I went back home. Not, I should add, without a good deal of bitching about me playing him for a fool for several years…' He plucked a flower from the tall plant next to the door and sniffed. 'Fragrant.'</p><p>'A rose.'</p><p>He placed it in his cloak's shoulder pin with a smile. 'I thought they were extinct.'</p><p>'They will be if you keep pulling off their genitals and using them for decoration,' she replied tartly. 'Harlock's here,' Cleo told him as they walked towards the curtain of water which separated her private quarters from the rest of the newly established nemeton.</p><p>'I know.'</p><p>'Were you planning…'</p><p>'Not especially. He can get a little… tetchy… when my name comes up in conversation. I'm not sure what his problem is - I didn't lie to him as such, and I <em>did </em>make myself useful…'</p><p>'...whilst you used the <em>Arcadia </em>as a way of mopping up a major trafficking operation that was kidnapping and selling your citizens in other galaxies?' she finished sweetly for him. 'Ben - on a personal level, I like you a lot. But there are times you excel at - as Harlock put it - being something of a manipulative dick.'</p><p>'Part of my charm,' he replied, and took her hand, bowing over it hand lightly brushing his lips over first the back, then turning it over and doing the same to the palm, causing her to take a sharp breath. He offered his arm. 'Shall we?' The curtain of water parted as they passed through, to be met on the other side by a breathless little epimeliad, red-haired and applecheeked.</p><p>'My queen.' She curtseyed. 'There's a message on the intergalactic warp feed for His Majesty…'</p><p>Dessler sighed. 'Work, work, work… Can it wait?'</p><p>'It's from someone called "Blaze" - he says it's urgent…'</p><p>He patted the sweet little mazone on the cheek. 'Never known him to make a mountain out of a molehill. I suppose I'd better take it. Can you…?'</p><p>'I'll give the delegation your apologies. I think we can allow you to be fashionably late.'</p><p>Her aide, Zinnia, sidled up to her as she watched him walk away, keeping his strides short so as not to cause the little messenger to scurry to keep up. 'Is it really wise to be so intimate with that one?'</p><p>'Wiser than not,' Cleo replied dryly.</p><p>'He plays a deep game… sometimes I'm not sure where that affable rogue stops and the emperor begins,' Zinnia replied sharply.</p><p>Cleo smiled. 'Sometimes, I think he's played both roles for so long, that neither does he…' She faced Zinnia with a smile. 'Come. It won't do for both of us to keep the delegation waiting.'</p><hr/><p>It took the <em>Arcadia's </em>communications officer five minutes to put him through to her captain. Whether that was standing orders, or she simply had to get him out of bed, was a tossup.</p><p>'Harlock.'</p><p>The man on the other end of the 4D commlink folded his arms across his chest covering the skull and crossbones emblazoned on the navy blue jacket. 'Ben.'</p><p>Dessler inclined his head slightly, not even trying to hide the smirk that played around the corners of his generous mouth. 'I thought you'd be <em>pleased</em> to see me…'</p><p>'I'm not sure why, you lying, duplicitous, blue-faced bastard.'</p><p>'I thought we were over that?'</p><p>Harlock glared at him.</p><p>'I didn't lie.'</p><p>'You didn't exactly tell the whole truth.'</p><p>'Technically…'</p><p>'To hell with technically, "Ben". I thought… we <em>all</em> thought, and you damn well encouraged it… that you were just some minor playboy princeling, not entirely welcome at court, slumming it on a gap year.'</p><p>Dessler shrugged. 'It <em>was</em> true…'</p><p>Harlock's hologramme leaned towards him. 'Ten years before we met!' He yelled into Dessler's impassive face.</p><p>The Gamilan Emperor raised a hand and waved off the accusation. 'Details, details… you know as well as I do that people will leave the envoy - or crewman - alone when they fear reprisals from either the emperor - or Captain Harlock. You do it all the time. You're just pissed it took you so long to figure it out.' He smiled wistfully. 'Besides, I rather enjoyed being just Ben. It was rather refreshing being liked for just being myself…'</p><p>'Hah. Hardly yourself…' Harlock pointed out. But he unfolded his arms and leaned on the ship's wheel. 'Is there any particular reason you felt the need to plant your smug visage in front of me after more than a year without a word? You never write, you never call…'</p><p>Dessler was hard pressed not to laugh. Harlock was too much like himself; he felt he had to make a point but wasn't going to hold a grudge for long over the trivial matters. He'd genuinely enjoyed his on-off adventures aboard <em>Arcadia</em>, and yes, very fleeting though it was, that <em>was </em>a pang for not being honest with the man from the start as to his real identity that wafted past his atrophied conscience...</p><p>Harlock sighed and shook his head. Behind him someone was stomping up the stairs to the Arcadia's main gantry. 'Is that Ben?' a familiar voice asked. A tall man, middle aged, with short fair hair and a permanent scowl stuck his face into the camera. 'Oi! You still owe me a hundred credits, you lying ponce!'</p><p>'Well if it isn't my old friend Ali... I think I'm good for it.' Dessler grinned at his former crewmate. 'Nice to see you too…' he called out as Harlock pushed his growling crewman out of the way.</p><p>'Don't bait him,' Harlock warned. 'You're not the one that has to live with him. Now what the hell needed you to use that emergency frequency l gave Cleo?' A beat. 'Why are you in her quart…. You know what - I can live without knowing that.'</p><p>'Because you weren't answering <em>anyone's</em> calls, and Layla Shura has been trying to contact you. Blaze's temporary setup didn't have the range, so he called the ship I've got waiting near Barnard's Star, and they called me. And since you weren't taking <em>my</em> calls…' Dessler leaned back in his chair and saluted with the goblet in his hand before taking a drink. 'Still sulking after your spat with the lovely commander?'</p><p>'Hardly a spat.' Harlock didn't elaborate. 'Just taking the opportunity to do some research whilst we're here, without interruptions. What does she want this time?' He peered at the bottle on the table. 'Is that one of my Bordeaux?'</p><p>Since the man owned the only store of pre-Homecoming War liquor this side of his own family's hoard, and had in fact gifted Cleo with the case, Dessler chose to treat that as a rhetorical question. 'Two ships have gone missing. Something to do with one of those little systems that float around between our galaxies.'</p><p>'So? They have an entire fleet at their disposal. I'm not Layla's lapdog. Outlaw, remember?'</p><p>'Now who's splitting hairs on the truth?' The Alliance wanted Harlock's head on a plate, as did the Machine Empire. The SDF? Tended to regard him as a bit of a nuisance but good to have around in a fight, since he tended to take an even dimmer view of actual piracy than they did and they could take the credit and dodge the blame for the results… 'The system disappeared about ten years ago, after a dark matter wave hit it. And one of the ships <em>was</em> the rescue mission, or so I gather.'</p><p>'Still not my problem.'</p><p>Dessler placed the goblet on the side table. 'Blaze's message was short, and it was a poor connection. He says it's a ship called the <em>Sirius</em>…' He genuinely did like the pirate - the convenient identity of Arcadia's "blue pirate" wasn't the only reason he'd spent so much time travelling with the man when business took him into this galaxy, so watching Harlock's normally implacable mien slip as his face lost any colour it did have under his space's pallor gave him no pleasure, and a momentary pang for being a dick. 'Harlock?'</p><p>'That's the ship Wataru was assigned to - his class were on a milk run…'</p><p>He was on his feet before Harlock had finished his sentence. 'That I didn't know. Whatever you need…'</p><p>Harlock looked at him sharply, and he replied with one short nod.</p><p>'I might take you up on that.'</p><p>'Do. I can bring a substantial portion of the Imperial Fleet to bear if you need it.'</p><p>'You'd do that?'</p><p>It tested his patience a little that Harlock needed to question that. 'For a friend? Yes.' He cut the connection before the pirate could reply, and turned to see Cleome watching him from just outside the projection area. 'I think I need to suggest a little recess for our conference,' he told her.</p><p>'You're going with him.' It was a statement, not a question.</p><p>'This planet's about halfway between our galaxies, so if there's dark matter activity there that needs my attention, I need to know, and he does have the best ship for the job.' Knowing full well she didn't buy it he smiled warmly at her. 'He <em>is</em> a friend, one of the few people who doesn't take any shit from me. I know where I stand with him, and he's saved my life more than once. I owe him. Also - I know those kids. It's not just Wataru on board - Rick's son Guy is in the same class.' He placed a kiss on her forehead, leaning down to do it, since he towered over her. 'I am sorry, but I will make sure Talan knows to proceed with the negotiations via warp. Just don't flirt with him too much - I don't want to come back and find he's been charmed out of half our empire…'</p><p>'I might,' she told him sweetly, 'take that as a challenge.'</p><p>'Well if you do, be prepared for me to be <em>excessively </em>charming when I try to persuade you to give it back.'</p><p>Watching him go she smiled to herself. 'It might even be worth it…' she murmured.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Arcadia.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Somewhere near what was once Heiligenstadt in Oberfranken, Earth</em>
</p><p>Harlock paced the length of the upper gantry of the Arcadia's main bridge and swore under his breath. 'Just how long does it take to get those engines back online?'</p><p>'I had to take the entire system offline so Maji and I could take a proper look at the systems,' Yattaran told him bluntly. 'I can't start them from cold. The dark matter feed needs to come back online slowly. It's been a month. We've got the bloody galaxy to cross. A couple of hours won't make that much difference…'</p><p><em>You know… there's a reason Harlock used to spend so much time in the Central computer room</em>… Tochiro's mellow voice murmured inside his head. <em>Pace all you want in there: no-one has to know</em>…</p><p>'Thanks, my friend. I think they all know I'll be wearing a groove in the floor.' He looked round as the comm system chimed. 'Is that someone outside the main hangar slipway?'</p><p>From the lower bridge his newest recruit checked the feed. 'We've got someone wanting to come aboard. He has a valid crew ident… though it's an old one.'</p><p>'I thought I told you to purge that from the system?' Harlock muttered at the empty air.</p><p><em>Must have slipped my mind</em>, Tochiro replied glibly over the speakers. <em>My bad. Do we leave him outside or let him on board</em>?</p><p>Harlock sighed and ran a hand through his already unruly hair. 'I'm tempted to send a couple of beefy ex-SDF marines to bring him to the bridge in handcuffs… Open the door, and tell him he knows the way. Knowing him he'd probably treat an escort like a bloody honour guard…'</p><p>He didn't have long to wait before Dessler… <em>Ben… </em>arrived on the bridge, striding up the stairs and onto the gantry and dropping into the captain's chair without so much as a by-your-leave, sweeping his cloak out of the way with studied elegance. A gloved hand reached up to stroke the bird's beak, as it stretched down from the creature's perch on the back and cawed softly at him. 'Hello there, you daft thing. Still putting up with your cranky captain?'</p><p>'You're in my chair.'</p><p>Ben looked down at the plush red upholstery, and ran an appraising hand over the skull carving under his right hand. 'It was empty. I thought I'd save you the trouble of offering me a seat. Though you could offer me a drink…'</p><p>Yattaran spluttered, saw the look on his captain's face, and decided that staring at his console was the better part of valour.</p><p>'I offer <em>guests </em>a drink. Not former crewmen who turn up out of the blue expecting to be let on board after going awol for five years…'</p><p>Silence. Even Yattaran held his breath, waiting for one of them to break first.</p><p>It was Harlock who gave in, scowling at the beatific amusement on the other man's face. 'This isn't a passenger liner.'</p><p>'I know. I'm more than able to work my passage.'</p><p>On the lower bridge someone choked back a snigger.</p><p>'Do you really think I can treat the ruler of half the Greater Magellanic Cloud like a common pirate?' Harlock asked. Ben shrugged.</p><p>'It's not without precedent.'</p><p>'When I thought you were an unfavourite younger son with daddy issues…'</p><p>'None of which,' Ben replied amiably, 'may I remind you, was a lie.' He stood up and offered his hand. 'If I want to be treated like an emperor, I can get that back home. Don't you start, Harlock.'</p><p>He waited, watching the flickers of different emotions cross the other man's face. Harlock could do impassive with the best of them, but that was a hard-earned skill, and for those who had the eyes to see, underneath it he was still a man whose emotions ran closer to the surface than many people guessed.</p><p>'Oh for fuck's sake captain - will you two just kiss and make up already?' Ali took the last three steps onto the gantry in one noisy leap, and leaned on the railing to stare at the tableau. 'Hell… I could sell tickets to that…' he grinned at the two men who stared at him and sighed in unison.</p><p>Harlock took the offered hand, and then pulled the other man into a quick, but heartfelt hug. 'Bastard. You have been missed.'</p><p>'Not by me!' Ali called out, waving a hand in the air. Ben pulled free of Harlock's grasp and reached into his jacket. He pulled out a small pouch and tossed it to Ali, who caught it just before it went over the edge of the railing. 'Ooh - with interest I hope?' He peered into the little bag and came up grinning. 'Good to have you back, Benny-blue!' He eyed the man from head to toe and whistled approvingly. 'Planetary despot suits you, and business must be good… nice threads…' He clicked his tongue against his teeth. 'Though… cloaks? Really? So passé these days…'</p><p>'Because holey sweaters and leather pants with unknown stains on them are de rigueur?' Ben deadpanned back.</p><p>Ali looked down and pulled a face. 'Oh man… clean on this morning…' he tugged at his green sweater, and frowned as the yarn unravelled even further.</p><p>Knowing this could go on for hours given half a chance, Harlock slapped Ben on the shoulder. 'Let's just take this one privately, shall we?'</p><p>'Does this mean I'm forgiven?'</p><p>'It means I might be persuaded to bring out something palatable instead of the paint stripper my predecessor used to save for unwanted guests… assuming Hannibal didn't launch a raid on the remaining cases.'</p><hr/><p>As a crewman he'd rarely spent any time inside the captain's private quarters, and Ben looked around with interest at the opulent expanse. 'It's a little overwhelming…'</p><p>'This from the man who lords it over half a galaxy?' Harlock gestured to one of the richly upholstered chaise-longue and busied himself at a tantalus on a heavy, baroque antique sideboard.</p><p>'I've seen your quarters on Deathshadow Island. Those… are you. Modern. Comfortable, plain but expensive. This…' He waved a hand expansively, snagging the thick crystal tumbler out of his host's hand on the way, 'is not you.' He took a sip and sighed appreciatively. 'That desk alone is over fourteen hundred years old or I'm no judge of valuable antiquities. The rest of the wooden fittings aren't far behind. It's the room of a man steeped in the past, not the here and now or the future. But you've had this ship for over twenty years, and you've never changed anything in here, have you?'</p><p>Harlock took the seat opposite and leaned back, sipping at his own goblet to savour the whiskey. 'Trying to analyse me, Ben? You told me your academic expertise was archeology and anthropology, not psychology...' he paused and narrowed his eye. 'On the other hand it turns out you were my age, not the twenty and change you let us think…'</p><p>'Can't help great skin. And the psych and anthro studies complimented each other. Really, it's not that hard to read you. You're not a man who spends his time navel-gazing and longing for the past. Even if this room was empty, you'd only have to look at the view from the windows there to see this is the room of a man who spends more time looking behind him, than ahead. The furnishings are just gilding that lily.'</p><p>'Funny… Kei said the same thing when we first got together.'</p><p>'Where is she?' Ben looked around as though expecting the tall, lovely XO to walk into the room on cue.</p><p>'Dealing with some last minute issues with the research we're conducting.'</p><p>'And once again, so economical with the truth.' Ben raised his glass. Harlock raised his visible eyebrow. 'Don't worry, I don't intend to ask what you're really up to all the way out here, incommunicado off and on for the past couple of years.'</p><p>'If you think you can finesse the details out of Cleo with your cock, forget it.'</p><p>'I'm saddened that you think I'd be that obvious. I can usually get what I want long before I need to bring out the big guns….' He smiled beatifically and Harlock snorted.</p><p>'Save the tongue jokes for the crew. Did Blaze add anything in his message that you didn't mention over the holo?'</p><p>'It was necessarily brief… technically my ship isn't supposed to be in this galaxy. I'm surprised he knew…'</p><p>'Don't be. He has the full resources of the Millennial Thieves at his disposal now.'</p><p>'So it's true? The old man finally hung up his gunbelt?'</p><p>'I wouldn't go that far. I'd call it a long overdue vacation. Cards on the table, Ben - why <em>are </em>you here? You didn't need to be here in person to help me out, and I'm not exactly short of deckhands. So what are you up to?'</p><p>Ben settled back in the chaise longue and took another sip of the hundred and fifty-year plus whiskey. 'Firstly, I really do care about those boys of yours. I remember the last time you had to go haring across the galaxy to find them, and I won't forget what Rafflesia did to them in a hurry. You have great kids, growing into fine young men and if Wataru's in danger, I want to help.'</p><p>'I also have a daughter…'</p><p>'I rather thought you'd prefer me not to notice?' He hid his smirk at the sharp look that earned him from Harlock's hazel eye behind the cut glass. 'But this planet is fairly close - in cosmic terms - to my backyard. The dark matter waves could be a natural phenomena, but if they're not, I'd like to know about it. And I can't send a ship to investigate because that doesn't just violate my treaty with the SDF, but could also alert anyone watching in my galaxy. And believe me, you do <em>not </em>want either of my two resident pains in the backside strolling over for a look…' He took another long sip, finishing the glass. Without being asked, Harlock reached for the bottle and offered a refill. 'I've got two expansionist, aggressive empires constantly nibbling away at my borders. Ones who think their green skin makes them some kind of superior race, and that my people exist for their pleasure, their amusement, and to do the work they're too proud to do. If the mechanoids are involved, I do not need an equally aggressive, expansionist and bigoted <em>alien </em>race squatting a short hop off the front door, as it were.'</p><p>Harlock leaned back again in his chair and stared at him. 'You don't trust me to tell you?'</p><p>'I haven't seen these things for myself yet, Harlock. Not up close and personal.'</p><p>'That's what you have advisors for… isn't it supposed to be good to be the king?'</p><p>Ben laughed harshly. 'Not so that you'd notice. Most days it's a ballache.'</p><p>'Because you don't delegate enough?'</p><p>'Neither do you.'</p><p>Harlock drained his glass in one long swallow. 'The difference is, I'm only in charge of one spaceship and a couple of hundred people at most. Anything happens to me when I go walkabout, it's no big deal except to the handful of people who care. Something happens to you, and those expansionist arseholes you're keeping occupied in your galaxy would quickly steamroller over your forces and turn their attention here. And although both the SDF and the Alliance have expanded rapidly since the Machine Wars, they couldn't fight off the Bolar Empire, The Illumidas and any shit Promethium would pull once she saw an opportunity… Not to mention I'd have Talan putting a target on my back so big even I'd have nowhere to hide.'</p><p>'And you think this universe is big enough to save me from Kei if anything happened to you because of me?'</p><p>They toasted each other silently. This time Ben refilled the glasses. Harlock regarded him over the rim of his glass not wholly unguardedly. 'You know… it might be a little embarrassing for Wataru to have his father come running to his rescue. I'm not sure his self-esteem would survive the Gamilan Emperor as well…'</p><p>'We aren't rushing to his rescue. We're answering a call for help to rescue two missing ships and their crews, plus checking out a potential metanoid base between two galaxies.'</p><p>'Excellent sophistry,' Harlock drawled. 'Now I know how you sleep at night.'</p><p>'Actually that would be a choice of twenty-five very lovely young women and six very handsome young men.'</p><p>Harlock's spit take at least landed on the rug. 'Even I can work that one out without taking my shoes and socks off. That's one from every colony…'</p><p>Ben smiled enigmatically and nodded.</p><p>'Your harem is made up of your <em>hostages</em>?'</p><p>'Tribute,' Ben corrected him. 'Volunteers only, I only take the best and brightest, and they only serve for two years, after which, if they prove worthy, the rewards include full citizenship, and postings suited to their talents.'</p><p>Harlock's headshake could have indicated either admiration or disbelief. 'Great Gaia, Ben… I've heard of gunboat diplomacy, but you conduct it from your damn <em>bed</em>?'</p><p>Ben allowed a spectacularly feral smile to stretch the corners of his mouth. 'It has been known. There was a delightful aquatic girl a couple of years ago… could hold her breath for the best part of half an hour. The Illumidas ambassador hadn't a clue what was going on beneath the covers…'</p><p>'Oh sweet Earth, Ben. You really are a degenerate!'</p><p>The speaker was a tall, slender woman with long golden hair, who walked into the room through the massive, heavy oak double doors and sashayed towards them, a vision in red leather and black thigh boots. Behind her walked an ethereal creature of mist and shadow, pale skinned, with silky pale green hair and large round, vertically pupiled eyes.</p><p>'Kei!'</p><p>Ben sprang to his feet and strode over to greet the human woman, pulling her into a bear hug and then kissing her soundly - but chastely - on the lips. 'You look as lovely as ever.'</p><p>'So do you,' she told him. Her tone was bright, but brittle, and he could see the lines of strain at the corners of her lovely cobalt blue eyes.</p><p>'My harem always has room for one more,' he told her. It earned him a punch on the arm.</p><p>'No thanks. I've got more than I can handle right here.'</p><p>He smiled warmly at her, gave her another hug and released her, to turn his attention to the delicate alien woman behind her. 'Mimay.' He bowed low, making a leg with flamboyant grace, before taking her hands in his and bowing over them, kissing the back of each one in turn.</p><p>'Ben.' She inclined her head gracefully, and accepted the kiss on the cheek he offered. She reached up to trace the lines of his face with long, attenuated fingers. 'You've been working too hard.' She didn't wait for him to reply, but walked over to the chaise longue he'd vacated, accepted the glass Harlock held out to her and dropped elegantly into the seat, leaning casually against the raised back, the diaphanous folds of her overdress sweeping the floor.</p><p>'You don't offer me a drink?' Kei asked Harlock.</p><p>'You don't drink,' he pointed out. She grabbed a tumbler from the table, picked up the bottle and filled it half full. 'I do today.' Chairs being in short supply, she sat on Harlock's knee. 'Any more news?' she asked of Ben, looking hopeful.</p><p>He shook his head. 'I'm sorry. Nothing yet. The only thing I can bring you so far is myself, for what little it's worth.'</p><p>'It's worth a lot,' she replied, ignoring the little jab in the side Harlock gave her. 'Ignore him. I know you don't have to be here in person. And I'm glad you were in the right place to find us.'</p><p>'Don't encourage him,' Harlock told her. 'He'll only follow us home…'</p><p>She jabbed him in the side with her now empty tumbler. 'He already did, remember? When you bought him at that dreadful auction…' She smiled sadly at Ben and stood up. 'I need to get back to work. The flight prep…'</p><p>'Can wait,' Harlock said softly. 'Get some rest, the crew can actually get this behemoth off the ground without you waving a clipboard in their faces…'</p><p>'I can take a break once we're en route…'</p><p>'I'll make it an order…' He gave her a push in the direction of the bathroom, ignoring her mulish face. 'And I recommend a shower… you smell like a foundry…'</p><p>'Yes, well, we had a couple of problems in the tectite extrusion plant…' she broke off, and gave Harlock a guilty look. 'Good point.' She practically scuttled into the adjoining bathroom, with a backwards glance at Ben, who just smiled at her discomfort and prepared to take his leave.</p><p>'You have a berth for me?'</p><p>'I should put you in with Ali… But I'm not that cruel. There are plenty of rooms free, since we're not running with a full crew. Pick one.'</p><p>Ben nodded. Before he left he added: 'Many still here who I know?'</p><p>'Just the regulars this time out, so yes. But Ben…' he paused. '...some of them were not too happy when your real identity came out.'</p><p>'I imagine not,' he replied dryly. 'Makes me wonder why you kept my secret for so long.' He strolled out, cloak slung casually over one arm and didn't look back, and so missed Harlock's wry smile at being caught out.</p><p>Mimay reached for the remains of the bottle, emptied it into her goblet and then drained it in one smooth swallow. 'You knew?'</p><p>'Mmm. For a couple of years before he finally left us permanently. What?' He leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. 'Plenty of the crew have things in their past they'd rather forget, or hide. I don't usually pry. But I am not, and have never been, a complete idiot. All those long absences... Different hair, clothes, manner… the lighting on the warp feed whenever I had to deal with "Dessler" was always low, or he kept his face shadowed, and his voice was deeper. I could have put it down to a family resemblance, but he slipped up a couple of times. I know a player when I meet one, and he gave a command performance.'</p><p>'You liked him.'</p><p>'Despite everything… I still do. But I'll be damned if I'll let him off the hook anytime soon.'</p><p>'It wasn't completely an act, I think,' Mimay said softly. 'That is, for all his power, a lonely man.'</p><p>'And a manipulative bastard of truly historical proportions,' Harlock reminded her. 'Do <em>not </em>underestimate him. His enemies can't testify to the lengths he'll go to protect his people and his person, for the very simple reason he rarely leaves any alive…' He paused. 'He reminds me too much of myself… an object lesson in what I could become if I had his responsibilities resting on my shoulders.'</p><p>'Then why allow him back on board?'</p><p>It was Kei who answered, walking back into the room clad only in a white towel. 'Because like Harlock, he'll walk into hell for a friend. Emperor Dessler of Gamilas just walked onto the Arcadia and basically offered to be just another crewman, to help our son.'</p><p>'He also wants a lift because he wants to stick his nose in without someone spotting the annoying protuberance,' Harlock pointed out. Kei perched on his knee and kissed the end of his nose.</p><p>'And you know damned well that he'd help anyway.'</p><p>'The trouble arises,' Harlock pointed out, 'Because he'll use his enemies and his council as an excuse to me, and use <em>me </em>as an excuse to <em>them</em>.'</p><p>'What you keep missing,' Kei replied with a laugh, 'is that he doesn't have to give <em>anyone </em>an excuse.'</p><p>The corner of his mouth twitched. 'Oh. I don't miss it at all. It's that playful duplicity that annoys me more than anything else about him.' The commlink on his desk pinged. 'Saved by the bell,' he quipped, before she could reply. 'Harlock.'</p><p>'Captain?' Franz's voice was tinny over the link. Kei made a mental note to sort out the settings. The <em>Arcadia's </em>systems had been shut down for so long, several systems needed an overhaul and a reset. 'Yattaran says can Mimay come to the bridge? We're ready for the restart.'</p><p>'I'm fairly sure he wasn't that polite,' Mimay murmured as she rose gracefully to her feet.</p><p>'Missing the old days?' Kei asked. The nibelung woman just smiled enigmatically - although anything else was difficult given her tiny mouth and otherwise impassive features, and headed for the bridge.</p><p>Alone at last, Harlock gave Kei's towel a tug. 'You need to unwind a little, your bottom is rigid.'</p><p>'Yama…'</p><p>He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. 'He's a grown man now, Kei. We can't panic everytime he goes out. He chose the life. Sooner or later they have to fly the nest.'</p><p>'And yet…' she murmured into his ear. 'Here we are…'</p><p>'It's bigger than Wataru, and in this case, although I don't like dancing when Layla pulls on a string, we are the best - the only - ship that can help the <em>Sirius</em>.'</p><p>'So if it wasn't a possible dark matter or metanoid incident…'</p><p>'Oh hell, I'd still go running. But like Ben, I'm happy to cling on to the fiction that I've got an out for not making my son feel like he's still nine and papa will come running to haul him out of the lake.' He kissed her cheek. 'We protect our own.'</p><p>Her answering smile was wan. 'And Project Thanatos?'</p><p>'Daiba's capable of handling the liaison with the Nibelung until we get back. He speaks the language better than anyone else as it is. We'll leave Maji with him - the two of them get on well enough, and only Tochiro knows the systems better.'</p><p>She nodded and stood up, walking to the desk with an enticing sway of her bare bottom. Before she hit the hololink's on button though he decided a little more captainly discretion was in order. 'Kei?'</p><p>'Hmm?'</p><p>'I'm loving the view but you might want to put some clothes on…'</p><p>As she dashed over to where she'd folded her flightsuit earlier, Tochiro cleared his throat. <em>You're being a little too calm, aren't you? I mean… this is Wataru we're talking about… two left feet and a tendency to charge headlong into trouble…</em></p><p>'I can't affect anything that's already happened or that will happen before I get there,' Harlock pointed out. 'We taught him as best we could and the SDF does turn out some fine officers. I guess we'll see if it paid off. I also know the captain of the <em>Sirius </em>- he served under Dantetsu for a while, he's got a good head on his shoulders. Anything they can't cope with, no-one can. I just have to hope we're in time.'</p><p>It was hard to know if the electronic gurgle in reply was sympathy or agreement.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Our dried voices, when</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We whisper together</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Are quiet and meaningless</em>
</p><p>
  <em>As wind in dried grass</em>
</p><p>
  <em>TS Eliott - The Hollow Men</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Planet Filament</em>
</p><p>Wataru awakened in the cockpit with a groan, and lifted his head from the control panel. It took a few seconds for his head to clear, and he could take in his situation.</p><p>First glance? Not good. It was pitch black and the cockpit power was out. But wherever they were, there was gravity, and the plane was on the ground. Or at least, wasn't moving. Behind his seat he could hear Guy moving and groaning.</p><p>'Yûki?' The sound was muffled, so the speaker wasn't on.</p><p>'Yeah. Still here. Power's out on my dash - you?'</p><p>'Same.'</p><p>Endless safety drills kicked in, and he started to check the suit. With the craft's power out, backup air was a priority, as was life support. Thankfully living on a spaceship or a deep space base for most of his early years, the drills were second nature to the point where doing them in the dark came as naturally as breathing. The latter of which he concentrated on, as his parents had taught them all. Slow, deep, even.</p><p>Air was working just fine, so the power had been knocked out, the backup was on, which meant… He reached for the reset panel.</p><p><em>Click</em>.</p><p>He relaxed as the lights came back on and the ship powered up. The cockpit lights he kept on backup, powered down to a dim yellow glow just enough to read the instrumentation by.</p><p>Altitude: Zero. Good news.</p><p>Landing gear: still in the belly. Not so good… taking off again wasn't an option. But at least whatever had grabbed them had let them down gently.</p><p>Again, not so good. It meant who or whatever it was Had Plans for them™… But: think positive - they were alive, armed, and pissed off, judging from the comments coming from Guy's side of things.</p><p>'All good inside for now,' he told Guy. 'What have you got on the scanners?'</p><p>'It's cold out, but bearable in suits without a boost to the environmentals. Oxygen levels within human norms, ditto across the board for atmosphere. Gravity point nine-eight Earth standard. Oh - and according to the big black sun in the sky? It's daylight.'</p><p>'Black sun?' Wataru peered out of the canopy. Outside the plane, the sky looked as black as deep space. The dim light inside meant he had to stare past his faint reflection. 'Hang on,' he warned Guy. 'Turning off the lights for a bit.'</p><p>He had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but Guy was right, it was "daylight", but the light outside, such as it was, had a peculiar quality to it, akin to the strange twilight during an eclipse. The sun overhead was indeed black, seen through the protective filter of the cockpit canopy, and overall the impression he had was of looking at the world in negative. All was black, grey and white. Everything was shadows, and those shadows moved in queer ways, when there was nothing he could see to cast them.</p><p>'I'm going out to take a look,' he told Guy. 'Stay here and try to raise the <em>Sirius</em>.'</p><p>'Are you off your rocker? You can't just take a walk out there by yourself!'</p><p>Inside his helmet Wataru smiled to himself at Guy's spluttering. 'Just shut the canopy behind me, you'll be safe enough.'</p><p>'That isn't what I mean and you know it. You do this all the time; just run headlong into trouble without backup. You think you're your damned father. But even he takes backup into a fight.'</p><p><em>Takes </em>was stretching that point, Wataru thought. Expected everyone else to keep up was closer to the mark, though he didn't bother correcting Guy's assessment. 'It's not a fight,' Wataru corrected him calmly. 'It's just a quick recon. I'll be back. Ten minutes tops, just to get a feel for the terrain. Maybe there's a settlement or something? You know we can't both go; one of us has to stay and try the comms.'</p><p>'The rules say we stay put.'</p><p>Aaaand there it came. You could always rely on Guy to pull that one out at some point. 'The rules don't really cover situations like this, Guy. I'm not waiting around with limited resources on the off chance the <em>Sirius </em>is out there and looking for us.'</p><p>'Fine. But I'm writing up my objections.'</p><p>'Kind of figured you would,' Wataru murmured, as he popped the canopy's manual control. He jumped out onto the wing and then down to the ground, landing with a satisfying - and reassuring - thud on springy ground. It might have been rough meadow at one point, but the grasses were desiccated, rustling in a sharp, cold wind. He shivered, but resisted the temptation to turn on the environmentals. Apart from the light from the plane, the diffuse crepuscular gloom was unbroken by anything that made seeing where he was going easy. He pulled his torch out from his utility pouch, and turned it on. He did a quick three-sixty to see if anything caught his eye, but apart from a few stunted trees, as dead as the dry grass that reached his knees, there was nothing.</p><p>Before doing anything else he checked the underside of the plane. As expected, the landing gear hadn't been engaged, so they lay belly down in the long grass. There was no trail leading up to their resting place, so whatever had transported them here had at least set them down gently. He duly informed Guy, who harrumphed at him. 'If they took that much care, they'll be along shortly to collect us. Buggered if I'm staying here on my own for that.'</p><p>He jumped down next to Wataru, who grinned at him through his faceplate. 'You might want to rephrase that - you know all those stories about alien abductions? What about the rules?'</p><p>'Screw it. We're safer together. If you won't stay put, looks like I'm watching your back.'</p><p>'You know I'll have to mention that attitude in my write up?'</p><p>'Bite me.' Guy took out his torch in one hand and his pistol in the other. Wataru unholstered his own weapon, a decidedly non-regulation piece that had been a parting gift from his parents. 'Don't even think of suggesting we split up - I've seen those warp-vids…'</p><p>'When do they ever end well for the grumpy sidekick?' Wataru teased him. 'Any preference on a direction? It's all grass as far as I can see - which isn't far, admittedly.'</p><p>'I took a few readings. There are some energy fluctuations from planetary north. Could be a town?'</p><p>'Distance?'</p><p>'Five miles.' He looked down at his feet and grimaced. 'In space combat boots… I'll have blisters.'</p><p>'Should have broken the damned things in properly,' Wataru told him. 'Why do you think my father always wears his to destruction and avoids the shiny new ones mom tries to make him wear?'</p><p>'Personally? Because he's a bit of a scruffy slacker and doesn't give a shit about what people think.'</p><p>Wataru laughed. 'Well, that too. But he learned the hard way you gotta live in what you wear, and since you never know what shit's going to jump out at you, well-worn boots, comfy body armour and the most powerful handgun you can carry are the best friends you'll ever have out here.'</p><p>'Easy for him to say,' Guy grumped. 'He stuck two fingers up to military rules, uncomfortable uniforms and shiny boots.' He shone his torch at Wataru's shiny black boots. 'Among other things… Wait… how come…'</p><p>'Maji,' Wataru told him. 'See, dad <em>can </em>choose to look the part, when he wants to. He gets Maji to make any new ones <em>look </em>old. Just to piss mom off, I think.'</p><p>Guy shook his head. 'Why hasn't she just shot him yet?'</p><p>'Mystery for our times,' Wataru laughed. 'So - north?' He waved his torch in the direction.</p><p>'Seems as good as any,' Guy agreed. 'Give me a minute to set up our piece of string so we can find our way back to where we parked.'</p><p>'Why? We're not getting that bird off the ground without a winch. You might want to grab the packs though…'</p><p>'Who died and put you in charge?' Guy grumbled, but he did fetch the survival packs from their compartment on the outside of the plane. He handed one to Wataru. 'Water's going to be the main problem.'</p><p>'You do remember we were on the same survival course, right?' Wataru slipped the rucksack onto his back and tightened the straps. 'Also, what my father actually does for a living…'</p><p>'When he's not kicking the shit out of traffickers, pirates, mechanoids, metanoids and generally saving the galaxy one kitten at a time?'</p><p>'Yeah, that.' Wataru knelt and dug his gloved fingers into the earth. 'The plants are dessicated, but the soil isn't.' He rubbed it between his fingers and showed Guy the streaks it left on the leather. 'Whatever killed the vegetation, it wasn't lack of water. Topsoil's got moisture. Whatever happened just sucked the life out of the plants…' He swore under his breath, placed his pistol back in its holster and pulled out his knife. He used the blade to dig deeper into the soil, turning over several clods. 'Thought so…'</p><p>'Care to explain?' Guy knelt beside him and peered at the soil.</p><p>'Remember what happened to Mistral? The machinners used something that sucked the life right out of the soil there? Dad's been working with your people for years trying to restore it - not making a huge amount of headway until the Mazone offered to help.' He poked again at the sample in his hand. 'No worms.' he dropped the soil back to the ground and brushed his hands off on his pants leg. 'Same thing - or very similar.'</p><p>'Like Earth as well, but on a smaller scale?'</p><p>Wataru grimaced. 'Seems to bear out the dark matter theory at least. That machine on your homeworld was based on Nibelung technology.' He got to his feet. 'Come on. Let's check out that signal. If there is a town maybe they can help us find the <em>Sirius</em>.'</p><p>'Or maybe they were responsible?'</p><p>'Either way, we'd find the ship then, wouldn't we?' He began walking in the direction Guy had suggested, forcing the other youth to keep up.</p><p>'Can't fault your logic,' Guy muttered as he drew level. He wasn't much shorter than his classmate, but Wataru had a habit of striding out as far as his long legs would reach. Unlike his twin however, he wasn't a complete asshole, and soon shortened his stride to allow them both to settle into a comfortable, ground covering lope.</p><hr/><p>They'd been using the torches to sweep the ground in front of them for less than twenty minutes, when the light began to fail them. Guy shook his, switched it on and off a couple of times, and double checked the battery. 'I don't get it - according to the readout, it's fully charged.'</p><p>'The shadows… they're draining the light,' Wataru said quietly.</p><p>'The battery's fine…'</p><p>'I didn't say the battery. I said the light. It's not the torch losing power - the shadows are getting closer. Watch.' Wataru shone his torch ahead of him, and waited.</p><p>Slowly but surely, the circle of light it projected shrank as the young men watched. Guy shivered. 'You're right - it's as bright as ever closer to us. Are we drawing those shadows towards us?'</p><p>'Maybe.' Wataru switched his torch off, leaving them in the perpetual gloom that surrounded them. 'We can't travel fast if we can't see where we're going, but if the shadows keep deepening like this, we won't make any progress at all.'</p><p>'Can I go on record as saying I really don't like this? It's not exactly what I signed up for…'</p><p>'Shush.'</p><p>Guy bristled. 'Don't you shush me. You're not my bloody cap…'</p><p>'I heard something. Could you <em>please</em> shut up for five seconds?' Times like this, Wataru started to understand Mamoru's tendency to resort to a string of expletives. But Guy got the hint, and shushed. Wataru clicked off his torch, and pulled Guy down into the long grass.</p><p>With the only sound at first their own less than calm breathing, he thought he'd overreacted. Then he heard it again. A rhythmic pounding in a three/four beat. One. Two. Three. Pause. One. Two. Three. Pause.</p><p>'Horses,' he whispered in Guy's ear. 'At least three.'</p><p>'Got some sort of native tracker skills now?' Guy whispered back.</p><p>'Cantering, and the hoofbeats aren't in sync. If you listen you can hear the timing differences.' When Guy started to stand up to take a look, Wataru grabbed his belt and pulled him back down. 'Now who's being an idiot. You really think these are friendlies?' As if on cue, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the still air.</p><p>The hoofbeats slowed, and excited voices carried from a spot far too close for comfort. Signalling Guy to stay low, Wataru slunk towards them on his belly, wriggling carefully, quietly, through the grass, Guy following close behind.</p><p>Five mechanical horses stood like statues in what looked like the remains of a road, their single eyes glowing a dull red. Three were still mounted, mechanised men on their backs, glowing dials where their eyes should be; lipless gashes for mouths, their angular bodies dressed in a parody of human clothing - rich brocades and silks that hung from skeletal shoulders with less aesthetic effect than fabric draped over a mannequin. Two were on the ground, bending over a figure and laughing with a staccato mechanical drone as they poked at whatever it was with the business end of their rifles.</p><p>'This one's still fresh enough!' one of the dismounted hunters called out. 'We'll drain it here and the shadows can have what's left!'</p><p>Guy stirred, and Wataru had to haul him back down again before his head breached the safety of the long grass. 'There are too many,' he whispered into Guy's left ear. 'And we're too late.'</p><p>The speaker was already holding up a phail filled with a substance that gave off a wispy blue light, and the figure it had been holding - a man in SDF Survey Corp coveralls - was dropped to the ground like a discarded sweet wrapper.</p><p>The sound of the wind whispering through the dry grass took on a deeper, more ominous tone, and Wataru would have sworn on oath the shadows surrounding the group of hunters were getting thicker as he watched. The two on the ground looked around with sharp, quick movements, and mounted their impassive steed with more haste than he'd have expected them to show. Whatever it was that had them spooked, they didn't appear to want to hang around, because they whipped and kicked their mechanical beasts into a fast gallop, heading along the road towards the south.</p><p>With the little light the glowing machinners had provided gone, the shadows grew even deeper around the fallen crewman. Even Guy had gone deathly still and quiet, as they watched.</p><p>The shadows moved separately from the ambient gloom of the perpetual twilight. At times Wataru thought he could make out human forms in them, twisting and writhing as though engaged in a mass brawl that you could make out only in the shadows on a wall cast by firelight. Eventually one appeared to triumph, and moved out from the cluster of darkness, laying itself over the fallen figure.</p><p>Then the dead crewman stood up, glowing with a sickly green light.</p><p>'Oh, fuck,' Wataru breathed out. Now it was his turn to have his face pushed into the prickly hay, as Guy shoved him down as he instinctively tried to stand. Both of them lay as flat as possible, peering through the covering grasses as best they could, until the shadows thinned and dissipated, and the awkward, shambling dead man walking followed them, taking the same road the machinners had a few minutes earlier, but heading north.</p><p>They both sat up cautiously, and breathed simultaneous sighs of relief that the coast appeared to be clear, although every twitching shadow cast by a nearby lone tree had them hovering their hands over their pistols. 'What was that?' Guy asked eventually in a soft voice. 'Was it..'</p><p>'Yeah. A reboot. At least from what Mamoru and Zee told me, that's what it looked like.</p><p>'So, the same kind of things that killed my father?' Guy snarled this out. Wataru nodded slowly. Guy's father, Rick, had been an occasional crewman aboard the Arcadia, being an exceptional pilot and a good friend of Harlock's. A couple of years back, he'd been sequestrated at some point unknown by one of the metanoid infiltrators working in their galaxy. It was still a painful subject for his father.</p><p>'Yes. Except… Metanoids don't look human - they're kind of spindly, more like Nibelung physiology. Those shadows… when they moved, they looked human.' He shivered. 'Now I know why it freaks Mamoru out to talk about it. That's just… wrong.'</p><p>'But humans can't do that, right?'</p><p>'Who knows? We're not exactly in our universe anymore, are we?' When Guy raised an eyebrow he pointed to the sky. 'Black sun. Black light. The planet still kind there but not? What if we're in the metanoid dimension? Maybe those shadows we saw were the inhabitants of this planet?'</p><p>'And what? Taking over the bodies of the crew of that survey ship? And us?' Guy frowned. 'But why are the machinners still up and walking?'</p><p>'Nibelung tech, remember? That blue light? That's the life force they extract in the Great Retorts on Dai Andromeda. The same force that surrounds the <em>Arcadia </em>and her crew. I've seen it dancing around dad at times, and the old Harlock. It's connected to the dark matter, so makes sense they'd "survive". Besides, in a way, they're already dead, so…' He shuddered. 'We've got to find the <em>Sirius</em>, Guy. Those machinners took off towards the plane, so we're definitely on the menu.'</p><p>'Don't know about you, but I'm way too handsome and talented to end up as a snack for some entitled dial-head,' Guy snarled. 'And if these shadows are taking bodies, that's not happening…'</p><p>'I'm <em>far </em>prettier than you are,' Wataru pointed out, trying to lift the mood. 'There were about a hundred and twenty crew on that survey ship. Three hundred on the <em>Sirius</em>. You really think that's enough to go round on a planet whose last census listed a population of around twenty-five thousand humans and two thousand machinners?'</p><p>'Had to bring up the numbers, didn't you.' Guy looked more than slightly dyspeptic. 'That hand cannon your dad gave you wipes out dial-heads, I know that - how is it against Evil Shadow People?' He didn't wait for an answer, but after a quick check of their surroundings, got to his feet then offered Wataru a helping hand. 'Never mind. Two cadets against a planet full of weird-assery. If this were one of those warp vids, we'd be home by sunset and getting medals pinned on our chests for saving everyone, including some wandering stray dog.'</p><p>'And since it isn't?'</p><p>'We're totally fucked. But I'm not sitting on my ass to wait for it. If I'm going down, I'm going down fighting.'</p><p>Wataru grinned, although inwardly he seconded the sentiment. 'Guy?'</p><p>'Umm?'</p><p>'When we get back, I'll put in a good word for you with Nami if you really want.'</p><p>'Now that,' Guy replied with a shit-eating grin on his normally impassive face, 'is something worth fighting for. What are we waiting for? Do or die, I guess. Yûki-kun!' His grin spread into a smirk. 'Guess I might just go easy on your twin if we get out of this, and not tear his arms and legs off for fucking <em>my </em>sister after all…'</p><p>Wataru, who'd taken a couple of steps, tripped over a tussock and had to be fielded by his partner. 'He did <em>what</em>?!' His voice rose a couple of octaves. Then his brain caught up to his mouth as he kept pace with Guy. 'Wait a minute… she's four years older than us. What're you blaming Mamoru for?'</p><p>Guy laughed and slapped him on the back. 'Your fucking face, Yûki! Oh man, if you could have seen it!' He snorted. 'Mind you, kinda have to thump him one on principle… she is still my sister.'</p><p>'Claire can take care of herself,' Wataru pointed out. 'She's already got a posting to one of those new battle-trains.' They both sighed wistfully, and shared rueful grins. 'Gotta get ourselves out of <em>this </em>mess if we want one of those babies,' Wataru added.</p><p>'See. Power of positive thinking,' Guy agreed.</p><p>'Hang on… a couple of minutes ago you said we were totally fucked…'</p><p>'Well, that was before you dangled Nami in my face. The universe would not be so cruel as to deny me that date.'</p><p>'The universe might not. Dad's another matter entirely,' Wataru pointed.</p><p>Guy slapped his shoulder again, ignoring the filthy look Wataru sent his way. 'I get <em>you </em>out of this? He'd probably gift-wrap her and drop her off in person… And give me the keys to the <em>Arcadia </em>for the night...'</p><p>Wataru lengthened his stride. 'There's positive… and there's deluded, Guy.'</p><p>Guy chuckled. 'Man's gotta have dreams, Yûki-kun!'</p><p>'And stop calling me that - I'm your senior classman and two months older than you!'</p><p>'Aye aye, senpai!'</p><p>Wataru growled something that would have made even Mamoru take a step back in shock, and carried on walking, heading for the road.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Arcadia</em>
</p><p>With his choice of displacement activity limited to lounging in his cabin drinking with Mimay in companionable silence, lounging in his chair on the bridge drinking and having Kei wave a clipboard in his face, sitting in the Central Computer room drinking with Tochiro's ghostly chatter in his ears, or strolling down to the ship's gym to work off a bit of frustration and nervous energy, Harlock decided to take the option that made the fewest inroads into a dwindling supply of vintage wines and spirits.</p><p>Vintage <em>authentic</em>, he corrected with a mental smirk. Let's hear it for the onboard molecular printers… And hope Hannibal never got to hear about his suspicions that his predecessor had gotten through the stash he'd purloined from the family cellars at least five times over in the hundred years he'd sulked in his cabin. He rounded the corner of the corridor that contained the gym and training area, and was met with a cacophony of catcalls, hoots, whistles and incoherent encouragement from the open doorway, which was filled currently not by a perfectly serviceable door, but the bulky forms of Yasu and unless he missed his guess, the scrawny lanky form of Roderick, the latter normally rather laid back, but currently baying for someone to put their back into it.</p><p><em>So much for some quiet, intense me time</em>… Harlock pushed his way through his crew by means of some carefully planted elbows, and made his way through the group of men - and women, standing around the room watching a brutal smackdown on the mats, as Greg went flying backwards thanks to a perfectly placed blue haymaker. He was helped to his feet by a crewmate, who helped him limp off to where two others were currently slacking shirtless and limp against a vaulting horse, being tended to by Luna.</p><p>Martinez, Greg, Sabu… Harlock looked around. Roderick and Yasu were sporting bruises on their faces and scraped knuckles they'd really feel once the adrenaline wore off. Franz was currently stripping off his shirt and grinning at the ladies present, whilst Dessler - <em>Ben</em> - the cynosure of all eyes - waited in the centre of the mat, wearing only a pair of tight shorts and a shit-eating smirk.</p><p>Harlock sidled over to Doc. 'How many has he gotten through so far?' he asked dryly.</p><p>She peered up at him through her glasses. 'Six so far - had to send Taki over to Med Bay with a broken arm.' She stood up and nodded at the scene, as Ben grinned evilly at Franz and prepared to take on another victim. 'I think they forgot just how good he is… he could take you down on a good day.'</p><p>'Stop licking him with your eyeballs, Luna,' he teased her. 'Bad enough I can see Yara and Hallia drooling from here.' He himself took a long, hard look at the Gamilan, as he engaged with Franz. With an extra decade under his belt, he wasn't as boyishly trim as he'd been when he'd been aboard during the Mazone invasion, and he'd broadened alarmingly in the chest and shoulders. He was still fast - Harlock winced as he ducked one of Franz's deadly right crosses and launched a one-two of his own in reply that almost took the other man off his feet. Franz however was no wet behind the ears rookie, and just grinned despite his split lip, and danced out of reach.</p><p>Fast… powerful, with a long reach and long legs.</p><p>And he was holding back, that much was obvious. He allowed Franz to land one on his square jaw that sent him flying against Hallia, and let the young woman have both barrels of his legendary smile. 'Well hello there, you're new..'</p><p>Oozing. That was definitely the word for his charm. 'Where have you been all my life?'</p><p>'For the most part, I suspect I wasn't even born,' she replied with such a pitch perfect delivery, Harlock felt like applauding. But she was standing next to Yara, Franz's souvenir from their stay on Ventimiglia a couple of years ago, and Yara and schmoozing charmers tended to equal knives…</p><p>'I wouldn't!' Franz called out, stepping in before things got bloodier. 'She's Hannibal's little girl…'</p><p>'One of the fabled Pearls of Ventimiglia?' He offered his hand, and to his credit shook it, rather than bowing over it. Harlock had to wonder who'd tipped him off. 'The stories I've heard didn't even begin to do you justice.'</p><p>'Funny,' she smiled with that same sunny calm Kei often used before she let the unwary have both barrels. 'I was thinking just the same thing…'</p><p>He pulled his hand back with only a slight wince. 'Quite a grip you've got there.'</p><p>'Mmm. Imagine what it can do to external organs that don't have skeletal parts inside them,' she said slyly.</p><p>He just smiled sweetly and leaned casually against the wall. 'I imagine there isn't a man in the room who isn't physically or mentally protecting his crotch right now.'</p><p>'But not you?'</p><p>'Darling girl… you'd have to be able to get your hand around it first…'</p><p>Hallia just rolled her eyes and sighed. Franz tapped him on the shoulder. 'Ben… can we get back to me pounding you into the tatami before our poor captain has to deal with a sexual harassment complaint?'</p><p>'Franz - did you <em>ever </em>know me to get any complaints?' Ben asked him. He pushed himself off the wall, gave a languorous stretch and extended his hand, flexing his fingers towards the palm. 'Come and take your best shot, Franny…'</p><p>Predictably, Franz ended up flat on his back groaning. Harlock decided enough was enough and stepped forward, stripping off first his boots, then dropping his jacket and sweater beside them, before stepping onto the mat as Franz was helped to his feet by a grinning Yara.</p><p>'Playtime's over, Ben. I think they've warmed you up enough…'</p><p>Ben smirked. 'Think you can still take me, captain? I've learned a few tricks since we parted ways…'</p><p>Harlock eyed him up and allowed the corner of his mouth to twitch upwards. 'Added a few pounds as well.'</p><p>'All muscle.'</p><p>'Do your generals tell you that as they let you throw them sound the room?'</p><p>'Ten on the captain!' he heard someone call out. Martinez. You had to love loyalty.</p><p>'Personally I'd put my money on the blue guy.' Luna, not so much. 'What?' she asked when he looked directly at her and raised his visible eyebrow. 'He's got the height, reach and muscle on you… And those <em>thighs</em>...'</p><p>Ben eyed him up from head to toe. 'She has you th…' he never got to finish the sentence. Harlock went straight in with a knee to the balls, a jab to the kidneys when he doubled over, and sat on him for the win when he went down. 'You cheating fu…'</p><p>'Pirate rules,' Harlock told him calmly. 'You're on my ship now.' He stared around at the assembled crew, who just stood there somewhat slack jawed, unless they'd been around long enough to know his tricks, in which case they were smirking. 'I think you people have something better to do with your time?' He slapped Ben between the shoulder blades, not being too gentle about it, and waited until the room had mostly cleared before letting him sit up. He held out a hand and helped the Gamilan to his feet. 'Now that we've got that out of the way, I need to work off a bit of steam. You'll do just fine.'</p><p>'Do I get a say in that? I've already been pummeled by half the crew…'</p><p>'Six isn't half, you were just toying with them, and you aren't sporting that many bruises even on your turquoise hide. Why don't you show me that a decade of soft living, depravity and good food haven't blunted your edge?'</p><p>'There are several punch bags in here,' Ben pointed out. Harlock just smirked.</p><p>'I only need one.'</p><hr/><p>It was a good half hour before they called it quits, sweating, out of breath, and grinning like a pair of lunatics.</p><p>'I think Luna needs to rethink her bet,' Hallia told Harlock as she handed him his sweater and jacket. His boots he had to pick up for himself.</p><p>'What are you still doing here?'</p><p>'Just keeping an eye on you, cousin. And I put some clean clothes in the changing area for you, since Kei told me you forgot again...'</p><p>'Cousin?' Ben draped a towel around his neck from the nearest bench.</p><p>'Complicated. Hallie…'</p><p>She pouted slightly. 'What - I don't get to…'</p><p>'Follow us into the showers? No. I'd be out of here before Kei finds you if I were you.' He smiled at her as she stood on tiptoe to give him a peck on the cheek.</p><p>'Ugh. You're all sweaty…'</p><p>'Don't I get a kiss?'</p><p>She looked over at Ben and laughed. 'Seriously? I've heard about your wandering hands. <em>He's</em> family. You…' She gave him a visual once over at least three times before letting out a heartfelt sigh. 'Kei was right… he <em>is </em>a walking invitation for sex…'</p><p>'I have an open door policy,' he told her, straight-faced. She sighed again, winked at Harlock and walked out, without a backward glance. Ben turned to Harlock. 'Well that's a first…'</p><p>'Don't pout. You look dyspeptic,' Harlock told him. He pushed past Ben and headed into the showers. 'She's doing you a favour. Not even you can handle the world of pain messing with that one or her sisters would bring down on your head.' He left his pants on the bench and headed for the shower, leant against the wall with both hands, and let the hot water beat down on his back.</p><p>Ben's bare feet slapped against the wet tiles as he joined him at the next showerhead. 'She reminds me a lot of Kei. A lot of sass there. It's refreshing.' He stuck his head under the shower and shook vigorously, his wet, golden hair scattering drops everywhere. 'But why is she here? Are you working some kind of exchange programme with <em>Il Capitano Nero</em>? Or should I say "Khalsa"?'</p><p>'She brought some data I needed, and wanted to stay on for a bit, until we made a run back out that way. You know about Nero? Hah. Your intelligence network is far too well informed at times. And we're all puzzling how the hell you do it - it's not as though you - how can I put this? Blend in?'</p><p>Ben smirked, and turned round to let the water run down his face and chest. 'You'd be surprised. Look - I don't like what I'm hearing about this metanoid threat. I know they're mostly confined to the Milky Way and have ties with Andromeda… but what they want threatens all of us. I'd have taken more of an interest, but the past couple of years haven't been easy.'</p><p>'Hence your agreement with Rafflesia - sorry, <em>Cleo </em>- needing to be put on a more official footing?' Harlock asked him. 'You've taken some big losses recently. I heard about Gamilas and Iscander. I'm sorry.'</p><p>'We relocated most of Gamilas' population, but Iscander's refused to leave. Without their sacrifice it would have been a lot worse, but they destroyed that cometary fortress when they blew both planets. If Zworder had found the planets depopulated he'd have strolled right by them and taken that thing right into the heart of our largest cluster of inhabited systems.' Ben leaned against the wall, his forehead pressed against the tiles. 'Not a victory I felt like celebrating.'</p><p>Harlock switched off the water and headed for the drying field. 'You were lucky it was Zworder, not Zeda. Zworder's a blustering fool, Zeda on the other hand is a genius on the battlefield. He just serves a fool.' Dry, with his hair fluffed out around his face, he headed for the folded pile of clothes Hallia had left for him, Ben close behind for his own pile. 'You can't tell me though that the metanoids haven't stuck their noses into your neck of the woods.' At Ben's little cough he smiled to himself. 'You're not that subtle, Ben. You can tell me yourself, or wait until I talk to Hannibal's intelligence service.'</p><p>They both sat down once pants were back in place, to pull boots on, almost in unison. 'A planet called Telezart's been experiencing some strange phenomena. I've sent people there to investigate, but they've never come back. When Blaze told me about the <em>Sirius </em>and I hacked the files from Destiny, it looked similar enough to warrant me, as you so eloquently put it, sticking my nose in.'</p><p>Harlock paused in the act of tugging his sweater over his head. 'You do realise Layla would probably have just <em>given </em>you the damn file if you asked nicely?' he said, his voice muffled briefly by the rollneck before he tugged it into place and settled it neatly into place. He started to roll his sleeves up. 'Sometimes I think you'd get dizzy if you tried walking in a straight line.'</p><p>'Fifteen older brothers and a paranoid father taught me a long time ago that being a devious bastard was the only way to stay alive,' Ben replied dryly.</p><p>'I hesitate to ask how come you ended up inheriting…'</p><p>A shrug. 'I never laid a hand on any of them', he replied softly. 'No word of a lie.' He pulled on his gloves, then handed Harlock the eyepatch that had somehow ended up falling between them. 'Fine. I <em>might </em>have encouraged them to turn on each other, but honestly, it wasn't as though I ever had to do much more than nudge a couple of them in the right direction. Even without my intervention they'd have whittled each other down eventually, or our father would have. Overt ambition was not a survival trait…'</p><p>'And the younger brothers?'</p><p>'I was one of more than thirty, Harlock,' Ben replied bleakly. 'By the time I reached my majority, I <em>was </em>the youngest.' He stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. 'There's a damned good reason I'm still without an heir.'</p><p>A slight shudder, barely detectable, went through the ship, and the faint creaking noises in the background, reminiscent of an ancient sailing ship's constant murmurs and flexing, momentarily deepened. 'I rather think we've arrived…'</p><p>'Harlock?' Kei's voice came over the speaker on his collar. 'You might want to get up here. We've arrived in system, and there's something very wrong here…'</p><p>'When isn't there?' he murmured. Ben on his heels he set off for the bridge at a run.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Note to readers… I had to pull and re-write the latter half of this chapter, sorry!</em>
</p><p><em>Sometimes I really need someone who'll pull me up on over-egging my puddings </em>before <em>I write myself into a corner!</em></p><p>
  <em>Also - earlier chapters were amended very slightly to consistently refer to a certain character by his chosen nomme de guerre...!</em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>I am half sick of shadows, said the Lady of Shalott</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Tennyson</em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Filament</em>
</p><p>The strange black sun was starting to sink below the horizon as the young men approached the walls of the town. They'd almost got used to the peculiar "black light", with its strange negative glow, and its loss left them stranded in their tiny island of torchlight, with the shadows around them deepening with every passing minute. Which, as Guy pointed out, was patently ridiculous, because how could you have shadows without light? That was just good old fashioned darkness.</p><p>Wasn't it?</p><p>'Try telling that to this place,' Wataru muttered as they trudged onwards. 'There's something seriously wrong with a world where darkness casts its own shadows. I never knew there could be so many different shades of black. All this place needs is a mass of writhing tentacles and somewhere an insane interior decorator with a love of strange angles and multidimensional horrors is cackling with glee.'</p><p>'Had to say it, didn't you. You just <em>had </em>to say it…' Guy took a deep, shuddering breath, and let it out again, a small plume of mist that hung in the air, before joining the rest of the vapour trails than surrounded them, weaving in and around them as tiny dust devils stirred the dust ground underfoot, and caused the shadows to dance and quiver in time to a peculiar music only they could hear. 'I swear if something long, thick and slimy tries to violate me, I'll blame you.'</p><p>Nineteen years of his twin's never-ending shit had largely left Wataru immune to the constant bitching. He'd also realised a long time ago that some people just had a way of coping with fear that included a non-stop torrent of trash-talk that could, for the most part, be safely ignored.</p><p>It was the quiet ones you had to watch for, not those who broadcast their anger to the world with every breath. Some of the most dangerous people he knew had that calm, outwardly relaxed attitude to whatever the universe threw at them. His parents, Selen and Zero, Blaze and Marin, Hannibal, Professor Oedo… and that terrifyingly quiet sister of Emeraldas'...</p><p>Right about now he wished he had even a fraction of their relaxed approach of danger. His stomach was tying itself in knots, and he might have taken a slug of Mamoru's "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" attitude to go. Maybe a few days spent finding out how his father made it look so easy wouldn't be a bad thing…</p><p>'How the hell do you manage to stay so damn calm?' Guy waved his torch around in front of Wataru's face, 'How come you're not freaking out? Sometimes you're just so damn quiet it's unnatural…'</p><p>'I was wondering what dad would do if he was here,' Wataru answered without thinking. The admission made him blush, because a grown man - only six months away from his commission - did <em>not </em>wish for his dad to come and pull his ass out of his latest scrape…</p><p>Guy surprised him. 'Honestly? I wish Harlock <em>was</em> here. No-one else knows more about dealing with this kind of shit - both dial-heads and dark matter. He'd just grab that cosmo dragoon in one hand, sabre in the other, give you that "what-the-fuck-are-you-waiting-for" stare and stride right in through that gate…' He chuckled. 'At least until your mom grabs him by the scruff and tells him not to be an idiot, hauls out that pair of baroque cannons that should <em>not </em>be man portable, and charges in right up there next to him.'</p><p>Wataru had to laugh. 'Yeah. She does that a lot.' He had to push a lock of hair back off his face, that threatened to fall over his right eye. 'Fine.' He took a deep breath. 'What are you waiting for?' he quipped, and strode forwards as purposefully as he could.</p><p>'You to either cut your bloody hair or start using some product,' Guy grumbled at him as he jogged to catch up. 'I could lend you some…' Guy wore his hair - just as borderline regulation length as Wataru's mane - slicked back and controlled to within an inch of its life. Which meant unlike Wataru's soft tumble, his just stuck up and out in all directions at the moment.</p><p>'No thanks. Kanna likes to run her hands through it.'</p><p>The thought of his fianceé brought her face to mind. She'd cut her long blonde hair after her mother's death a couple of years ao, and he thought it suited her. Her quiet calm was the centre of his universe, despite his twin's teasing about him marrying the girl (literally) next door, and settling for boring domesticity. He also remembered the way Hannibal had verbally slapped Mamoru for the comments so hard that his normally couldn't-give-a toss attitude had taken a week to recover.</p><p>The memory stiffened his spine as they moved towards the gates, hugging the wall. He reached up to touch the breast pocket of his flightsuit, where he kept the little storage chip that held vids of his family, and more recently, Kanna. Words of his father's came to mind: <em>Fight only for what's in your heart, and give it everything you've got… </em>'Keep to the wall,' was all he said, keeping his voice low.</p><p>Guy grabbed his arm and hauled him to a standstill. 'Sticking to the shadows isn't advice that fills me with confidence right now,' he whispered back. 'Do you really want to walk into that dark patch?'</p><p>Wataru stared at the way the darkness pooled at the foot of the wall, a total absence of light against the greys and ashen tones around it. What the hell even caused these shadows anyway? It was night, there were no stars, and the small moon that seemed to have accompanied its planet into wherever or whatever this was reflected only the black light of the black sun. And on a still night, what the hell made them shiver and wander the way they did?</p><p>There was something, lurking just out of reach, that he'd heard once, about shadows… Extra shadows, where there was nothing to cast them…</p><p><em>Marin</em>.</p><p>More specifically, the old <em>Futatsuboshi, </em>lost with all hands. Nine, or was it ten years ago? Their father had rushed to the rescue just before he, Mamoru and Taro had been taken by the mazone. The ship…</p><p>...had been caught in a rift caused by a massive explosion that had torn a hole in space-time. Time had run more slowly and the shadows… he'd overheard their father describing it as something reaching out to rip away his soul...</p><p>He swallowed hard, tempted to reach for their dwindling water to wash away the taste of bile from his empty stomach. 'I think we've got to find the <em>Sirius</em> as fast as we can. We have to get through that gate…'</p><p>'Have to? No. <em>Need</em>, maybe. But I'm not walking in these shadows, Yûki. Not for anythi..umph.' His pained grunt as he was pushed down to the ground for the second time in the last couple of hours was muffled by a mouthful of dry weeds. 'Yûki!'</p><p>'Horses,' Wataru hissed into his ear.</p><p>The hoofbeats thundered closer almost as soon as Wataru finished speaking. The scrubby wasteland here was thin and patchy, not the deep meadow they'd hidden in before, and both youths felt their hearts pounding in their ear almost as loudly as the mechanical hooves, as the group of machinner riders swept past and into the town, not bothering to slow down as they passed the open gates.</p><p>They both let out huge sighs once the last rider had vanished. 'Close call,' Guy muttered. 'I'm amazed they didn't spot us.'</p><p>'Ever know an entitled bastard on horseback to look down at what he might be trampling underfoot?' Wataru replied.</p><p>Guy pulled a face. 'Yeah, good point.' He stood up and dusted himself off. 'Can you hear that?'</p><p>Wataru stood up gracefully. 'What?'</p><p>Guy turned a full three-sixty, pistol ready but pointing down. 'Crying and sobbing - like listening to someone crying a couple of rooms away through the walls… More like several someones, getting to that bit with the frustrated screaming…'</p><p>'It's just the wind,' Wataru said, sounding unconvinced even to his own ears. 'Come on. We need to find the <em>Sirius. </em>If those dial-heads can function, there must be some electronics still working, somewhere. A working comms system would be good.'</p><p>'That streak of chirpy optimism… how the hell do you come by that, in your family?' Guy asked him in a low voice as they tiptoed warily through the gates, Wataru on point, Guy constantly sweeping the rear and sides. 'Even a small planet like this is a lot of territory - they could be on a different continent altogether. And we have no comms, no transport…'</p><p>'How do you get anything done with that attitude?' Wataru whispered back. 'As dad would say, don't borrow trouble. If nothing else, we might be able to borrow what we need.'</p><p>'Borrow.' Guy muttered. 'Borrow, he says. You mean <em>steal</em>.'</p><p>'I said borrow, and I meant borrow,' Wataru snapped at him. 'I don't plan on keeping anything.'</p><p>Taken aback by the uncharacteristic vehemence, Guy backpeddled, but only slightly. 'Hardly planning on asking permission though are you? Or were you just going to leave a note?'</p><p>'We're on a ghost planet full of shadows, and dial-heads who hunt the living down for their life-force. I think the only person splitting hairs over the issue is right behind me.' If not for the need to constantly check their surroundings and peer through the unnatural gloom, he'd have lengthened his stride and left the steel-eyed youth in his wake. That, and the eerie wailing that came at them from all sides, and made him reluctant to move far from the comforting proximity of another living human, and to stay as far away as possible from the shivering shadows that seemed to keep pace with them. As if to hammer home their unnatural origins, neither he nor Guy cast any kind of shadow that he could see. Whatever strange unlight that cast these, it had no interest in them.</p><p>The shadows, however, were a different matter. Several times Wataru thought he saw parts of those dark pool reach out towards them as they inched cautiously down the road, keeping - by an unspoken agreement - to the centre of the roadway, away from the pavements and buildings that lined it, like hands reaching out to touch them, but drawing back as soon as they were noticed, only to edge forwards again the moment their attention was focussed elsewhere.</p><p>Wataru remembered the way the shadows had fallen on the dead body of the survey ship crewman, and shivered. 'Maybe they can only touch the dead?' he said out loud.</p><p>Guy gave him a peculiar look. 'They certainly waited until that bloke was dead. But I'm not planning to test it.' He frowned. 'They're avoiding you more than me… they pull back a lot quicker and don't get so close.'</p><p>Wataru swallowed, only a thin trickle of saliva to moisten his suddenly very dry mouth and throat. 'I've been around dark matter a lot more than you have. Maybe that's it?'</p><p>'Better hope it is a deterrent - the other option is you'd be catnip to them.'</p><p>Wataru shot Guy a dour look. 'Work on those motivational skills, do you?' A particularly heart-rending wail split the chill air, the sound of a small child crying. 'That came from down that sidestreet…' He'd barely gone two steps when Lawrence's hand on his collar yanked him to a halt.</p><p>'You really think there's anything alive on this planet that isn't us or the crew of the <em>Sirius</em>?' Guy whispered harshly in his ear. 'Stay on mission, Yûki - this is no time for heroics. Even if it is a child - just what the hell do you think you'll achieve? It'd only slow us down…'</p><p>Wataru reached up and prised Guy's fingers off his collar, giving the other man a slight shove as he did so. Guy might have also taken an inadvertent step back as the shadows played on the lines of Wataru's normally calm, handsome features, which only rarely displayed any emotion worse than annoyance. His usually hazel eyes looked closer to a dark, stormy sherry-brown and the look in them, combined with the tight thinning of his lips was, for a moment, a tranquil fury that left goosebumps on his skin.</p><p>He had to look away from that flinty gaze, just for a moment. When he looked back, it was just Wataru… calm, mild-mannered, never-raised-his-voice Wataru Yûki. <em>Just the shadows</em>… he told himself, as Wataru strode away towards the alleyway he'd laughingly referred to as a sidestreet, into the darkness outside the pool of greylight they currently stood in as the dark sun (and hadn't it gone down only a short time ago?) rose into the black sky.</p><p>Wataru, for his part, kept a firm hand on his cosmo dragoon as he walked into the shadows with far more confidence than he actually felt, following the sounds of the sobbing child - a girl, he thought, from the pitch. His torch - normally so powerful - still only illuminated a small area in front of him, a narrow tube of light bounded by shadow, as though he walked down a tunnel, not a road. That niggling itch at the back of his neck that accompanied the internal voice of reason that suggested Guy had a point, he tried to suppress. Stiff necked, stubborn, Harlock pride, his mother would have called it.</p><p>...and then would have done exactly the same thing, he thought with a wry grin. He stopped well clear of the gathering shadows in the sidestreet, and listened. He could still hear the sounds of a little girl crying, but despite his bravado to Guy - whose footsteps he could hear behind him - he wasn't going to just stick his head into those quivering shadows.</p><p>Guy was right though, he noticed. The shadows didn't seem to want to get too close. Apart from one small patch… 'Hello?' he called out tentatively. 'Are you hurt?'</p><p>Was it a little hiccup he heard? He shone the light towards the patch of darkness, and watched it be swallowed up by the shadows. Were they edging closer? Or just absorb the light? There was a smell in the still air as well, he noticed. Faint at first but growing stronger as he walked. Unmistakable to one who'd grown up during the seemingly endless battle against the machines: the sickly sweet stench of decay, mixed with the acrid taint of urine, faeces and the coppery, sour aftertaste in the back of the throat of old blood.</p><p>He tripped over the first body. 'Shit.' He pinwheeled to keep his balance, and his foot struck something soft, his boot sinking into something that squelched underfoot.</p><p>'Yûki?'</p><p>'A body…' he swung the torch around, and even the faint light that fought its losing battle against the shadows had no difficulty picking out what his left boot had stepped in. 'Make that several…' He suppressed a shudder as he pulled his boot clear, and tried not to gag on the smell he'd accidentally released.</p><p>'Oh, man… what the hell did you step in?' Guy wasn't so lucky, and wretched as the smell hit him.</p><p>'There are bodies here… the streets full of them.' It was, in fact, impassible; the bodies lay presumably where they'd fallen, all facing towards him (and the road behind, he assumed). But there was a gate ahead, and they were piled against it, where they'd tried to climb over both the wire and each other, trying to escape something.</p><p>'This planet was lost ten years ago - did people survive this long?' Guy asked, braving the stink to get a closer look. 'It shouldn't be this… fresh… and yes, I do use that term loosely.' He kept his torch swinging from side to side as though to hold back the shadows with its feeble beam.</p><p>Wataru knelt beside the closest body - a woman, he assumed from the skirt she wore, and the length of her fair hair. There was a smaller body underneath hers - a child; a little girl maybe eight years old. One arm was thrown protectively over the little girl's face. 'I don't think so. Time's weird here - haven't you noticed?'</p><p><em>Time… </em>said a voice from the shadows, <em>is all we have, here.</em></p><p>The volume of whispering in the darkness increased, and the young men instinctively moved closer, until they were back to back, weapons and flashlights at the ready. Part of the shadows nearest to them detached from the rest. The voice rustled like wind in the dry grass of Tabito. <em>Our bodies lie where we fell, decaying, whilst we are forced to watch. We cannot escape, we cannot feel, we cannot die.</em></p><p>'What do you want from us?' Wataru asked. 'Are you ghosts?'</p><p><em>Ghosts are dead</em>, the voice whispered. <em>Are we the dead? Our bodies rot, but here we are. We exist only in the shadows now, but the machine men have shown us a way… for a few. A way we can leave this place.</em> A smaller shadow grew out of the larger, the shape of a small child. A different voice asked <em>Mama</em>?</p><p>'I'm sorry,' Wataru replied softly. 'I truly am, but this is not the way…'</p><p>'Yûki?'</p><p>'The machinners let the shadows have the body of that poor bastard they tore the lifeforce out of. Did you read the briefing on the metanoid incursion on Ventimiglia?' Wataru took a step backwards, nudging Guy slightly to indicate they needed to retreat. 'They can possess the dead.'</p><p>'That's metanoids,' Guy pointed out. 'Not…' he waved his torch at the shadowy woman and her child. 'I mean… they're dead, right?'</p><p>'Dark matter,' Wataru replied slowly, thinking it through. 'It underlies all life… all matter, all energy.'</p><p>'But then why isn't Earth overrun with ghosts?'</p><p>'I can think of one it spawned,' Wataru said under his breath. Out loud he replied 'Don't look at me, I just work here.' To the shadowy pair, he added, 'I would help, if I could, but not like this. Killing us won't make this right.'</p><p><em>I cannot touch my daughter</em>! The shadow woman's voice was an anguished scream. <em>She cannot feel me, nor I her! We do not hunger, we do not thirst, but there is nothing for us. Every day we lose a little more of ourselves to that</em>… the shadow of an arm, clad in a ragged sleeve, pointed to the main mass of darkness they'd appeared from. <em>Soon we will forget… lose everything we were, even each other. Only the shadow will remain. Just pain, and mindless yearning for what we can never again be. A shadow of a shadow. I too am sorry, but I must do this, before stronger minds find you. You are our only hope</em>.</p><p>She gave the smaller shadow a push, and the little patch of darkness fell against Wataru and both he and the shadow cried out in pain as her shadow wrapped itself around the faint shadow of his own that pooled at his feet in the light of Guy's flashlight.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Arcadia</em>
</p><p>The ship shuddered from stem to stern as Harlock bounded up the stairs to the bridge, Ben close on his heels. Both men had to grab a railing to keep their footing.</p><p>'I'd forgotten just how often that happens around here,' Ben said as he gave his former captain a shove in the small of the back to stop him from toppling backwards. Although slim, he knew from past experience the man was all lean muscle and nowhere near as lightweight as he looked. Being flattened by eleven stone of solid space pirate was no laughing matter, especially with ten feet of staircase at his back. Harlock grunted a thank you and pushed back to regain his momentum. 'Inertial dampeners on the blink? On a ship this age…'</p><p>'I do the jokes,' Harlock told him with a glimmer of humour. 'Kei? Why are we being tossed around like a cork on the ocean?'</p><p>'The inertial dampeners are on the blink.'</p><p>Ben bit back a snigger and plastered an innocent look onto his face when Harlock glared at him.</p><p>'Not funny, Kei.'</p><p>'Do you see me laughing?' she half-growled at him. 'We're caught in a current of some kind, and the central computer seems to be somewhat… preoccupied. It took a few picoseconds for the AI to compensate.'</p><p>Both men stared at the main viewscreen. The rendering on the screen of data collected by the ship's powerful sensors resembled the image seen through a kaleidoscope, fractured and twisting constantly, as though they were looking at the infinity of images in an myriad of tiny mirrors. Harlock stared down at the floorscreen, his arms folded across the skull and crossbones on the chest of his jacket. 'This looks horribly familiar…'</p><p>'Isn't that what you described to me when you found the <em>Futatsuboshi</em>? After those black body drives of a mazone fleet blew?' Ben had to look away from the screen after a few seconds. The churning, fractured image was making him feel a little queasy.</p><p>'Similar,' Harlock replied grimly. 'It's a rip in space-time, into a sub-space dimension. Hard to spot, even with our sensors. But the Arcadia doesn't quite fully belong in normal space - her little trip through the nether regions of reality over a hundred years ago left her a little bit out of kilter.'</p><p>'So you can see this stuff because…'</p><p>'By "stuff" you mean those wavelengths inducing dry heaves? We know what to look for and our sensors can compensate for the lensing effect of the rift. A dark matter wave hit this region of space hard enough to fracture reality. The reason the Arcadia can sense it? She's partly still got a link to that sub-space. Right, my friend?' The central computer was uncharacteristically silent. 'Tochiro?'</p><p>Kei scanned her console. 'The central computer's now on the default backup. Tochiro's retreated. It's almost like the way we lose him on the anniversary of the battle for Earth…'</p><p>'That's weeks away.' Yattaran scowled and tapped away at his own station. 'Tracking the AI sub routine though the system… he's with us, just seems to be tied up with something. As though there's a massive data spike…'</p><p>'Define massive.' Harlock leaned on the wheel and gave his first mate a sideways stare. 'Surely you can cope with a denial of service attack?'</p><p>'Bigger,' Yattaran grunted at him. 'It's close to overwhelming the entire central server banks. The AI's operating from the back-ups.'</p><p>'Can you stop it? Purge the systems?' Kei asked him.</p><p>'It ain't a virus, Kei.'</p><p>'He's trying to process this space,' Harlock interjected softly. All eyes turned to the captain, slumped against the ship's wheel, his face ashen. Kei closed the short distance between them and placed a hand on his shoulder. 'I can feel it. Just as I did on the <em>Futatsuboshi</em> all those years ago. A pressure in my head, like a voice that won't go away… last time it was yelling at me to haul as and get the hell off the ship…'</p><p>'And now?' Kei asked.</p><p>'It's screaming…' Even the wheel wasn't enough to hold him up as he slumped to the floor under the weight of the pain he felt. A cool, delicate hand touched his cheek gently, and even through the fog of that second-hand torment he could feel it trembling. 'You feel it too?' he asked, his voice hoarse. Mimay nodded. 'What…?'</p><p>'This place… it touches something. Something that should never have been opened. It's directly in the path of the dark matter stream from the Gate of Yedar…'</p><p>'We've done that before,' Kei pointed out, kneeling at his blind side. 'It's never affected him like this.'</p><p>'There were tens of thousands of people on that planet,' Mimay said quietly. 'And they're all…'</p><p>'In agony,' Harlock finished for her. He sagged slightly and leaned into Kei's gentle embrace with a tight smile. He allowed Kei and Mimay to help him to his feet.' He took the few steps that took him to Kei's console and did a sweep of the readings. 'We're drifting closer to the source of the rupture, and in the direct path of whatever it's emitting. Yattaran?'</p><p>The rotund first mate had already taken the helm without prompting, elbowing Ben out of the way, though he dodged the half-hearted blow with the practiced ease of a long-serving crewman. 'Bit late for that - it's like being caught in a rip-tide. No way in hell even we can pull free of this easily, and we're only holding our course because of our dark matter cloud dissipating the worst of it.'</p><p>Mimay was almost running back to her control globe before he'd finished speaking. 'I can intensify the dark matter, maybe deflect this current…'</p><p>'No!'</p><p>It was Harlock who spoke, snapping out the command with uncharacteristic intensity. 'It's too late to stop it, we're committed.' He took the wheel back from Yattaran who stood away from the helm with noticeable relief. 'Besides, we're going in that direction anyway. All ahead full! All hands to emergency stations!'</p><p>'Do you need me to plot a course through the current?' Kei asked. Hands firm on the wheel he shook his head.</p><p>'No. I need to <em>feel </em>my way through this.'</p><p>'You look like shit,' Ben murmured near his ear. 'Are you sure…'</p><p>'There's no-one else, Ben. I can feel the currents…' Currents hell… what he could feel, like the nagging ache of a tooth, was the screaming of people more than a decade dead, and the more closely they followed that current, the louder it got. 'Stop yelling at me…' he muttered quietly.</p><p>From the lower bridge came pained grunts and curses as the pressure from the rift began to affect the crew. Ben, momentarily torn between Yattaran and Kei, chose to cross the gantry to the lovely XO's side and place a steadying arm around her.</p><p>'Thanks.'</p><p>'My pleasure.'</p><p>'Better not be,' he heard Harlock mutter from the wheel. A stream of creative invective from below suggested Ali had finally succumbed to the rift's murderous siren call. Blue lightning flickered around every surface of the ship and she plunged closer to the heart of the tear in space - now visible on the main viewer as a sickly red and green, pulsing glow, visible even through the billowing cloud of dark matter that enveloped the ship, which was being torn away like clouds on a windy day, almost as fast as it was generated. The ship bucked like a horse stung by a Tabito sand-fly, and Ben reached out to help Harlock steady the wheel. 'Thanks.'</p><p>'De nada. Gaia's tits, Harlock… Ever considered a nice, old-fashioned console? You're going to pull something holding onto this beast…'</p><p>'With Tochiro occupied, it can get a little… feisty…' Harlock replied through gritted teeth. For what was actually a precision instrument, the ship's wheel could sometimes feel like it really <em>was </em>wrestling with the mass of a kilometre-long battleship. The resistance was actually induced by the circuits that responded to the exterior conditions and the complex calculations made by the AI - Tochiro - on a continuous basis that the helmsman learned to interpret with experience. With Tochiro occupied, the baseline AI was a lot more sluggish. 'You can let go, I've got this,' he told Ben. In his head he felt the tiny murmur that told him Tochiro had switched a part of his consciousness back to the controls, and breathed a sigh of relief as the ship began to respond with something close to its normal sensitivity.</p><p>But… It was a timely warning that Project Thanatos would need that update Halia had brought them. The original specs for the AIs had been off the charts over a hundred years ago, but that was dealing with normal battle conditions. The <em>Arcadia </em>functioned at a speed and effectiveness far greater than her remaining sister-ship and her prototype because of Tochiro. Harlock had shot Hannibal's alternative proposal down in flames during their last discussion on the subject, and the reminder that in fact the old silver fox might have been right was a bitter pill to swallow.</p><p>'<em>It won't be enough,' the old man had told him bluntly.</em></p><p>'<em>It has to be. Who could you possibly ask to make that sacrifice?'</em></p><p>
  <em>He'd left the room before Hannibal could answer, because in all honesty, he knew what the old man would suggest, and he hadn't wanted to hear it.</em>
</p><p>The creaking of the ship, always in the background, subsided to a less ominous level, and the ship calmed as they passed through the turbulence, and into the space beyond the rift. The voice in his head was quieter, although the dull, nagging pain was being replaced by the beginnings of a hellish headache.</p><p>The last few drifting wisps of dark matter did nothing to obscure the view from the main bridge screen. There in front of them was the tiny system missing in "real" space - the small planet orbiting a strangely dark star, with one companion moon visible, the other two only - as Kei quickly confirmed - detectable from the gravitational disturbance they created.</p><p>'Is that supposed to look like that?' Ali pointed at the star. 'I mean… I can see it's illuminating the planet and that little bitty moon, but it looks…'</p><p>'Black,' Harlock completed for him. Still holding onto the wheel he frowned. 'The computers fill in false-colour images based on the spectral readings. That should be a white dwarf, but the image…'</p><p>'Looks like an ancient photographic negative,' Yattaran piped up.</p><p>'More like the life's just been sucked right out of it,' Ali pointed out gruffly. 'I thought black suns were just allegorical… then I remembered what sodding universe I live in.' Thin laughter rippled through the lower bridge personnel, but it quickly petered out.</p><p>'Kei, Yattaran, any signal from the Sirius yet?'</p><p>'You're lucky we can even see out of the view screen,' Yattaran replied sourly. 'Our computers are only making sense of what's out there because we have some previous frame of reference. And our little pal in there is working his insubstantial tushie off to do it.'</p><p><em>You have no idea</em>… Tochiro sounded as though he was speaking through gritted teeth. <em>You remember trying to push two magnets together with the same polarity facing? That's us - dark matter versus dark matter, trying to get to that planet - the current's carrying us there, but what happened to that planet…</em></p><p>'Is what happened to us?' Mimay stood next to Harlock, staring at the screen with unblinking eyes.</p><p><em>I can push us there, but</em>…</p><p>''It's taking everything you have?' Harlock asked softly. He tapped the baluster with a gloved hand, thoughtfully. 'What about we just hold and send in the bullets or the Space Wolves?'</p><p><em>I can hold</em>. Tochiro's voice sounded more than a little relieved. <em>I don't think we can make a close orbit, and I'm not sure landing would work. We'd probably fly off like a cork out of a champagne bottle if I took my eye off the ball even for a second.</em></p><p>'Do it,' Harlock ordered. He scanned the watchful faces around him. 'Who's with me? Volunteers only.'</p><p>Kei raised a hand, followed by Ali, Halia and Ben. Down on the main floor several hands were raised. Harlock looked down and shook his head. 'Sorry Franz - not this one. You hold Ali's station. Esteban - take over for Kei. Anita, is your hand up or are you trying to hand me that croissant?' Thin, strained laughter accompanied the feeble sally. Anita grinned. 'You need some muscle, captain darlin', it's me you need.'</p><p>'And you might need me.' Luna stepped forwards, a cat on her shoulder purring into her pony-tail. 'No way of knowing if the crew of the Sirius are hurt.'</p><p>'Fine. Get to the bullet. Yara - you've been asking for a chance to prove yourself? You go with them. Ali - you're piloting. Kei, Ben - space wolves, with me. Hopefully it's only the Arcadia that's strongly repulsive, not us.'</p><p>'Depends on who you ask!' Martinez said cheekily as he bounded up the steps to take over from Kei. 'Who's at the helm?'</p><p>Harlock stepped away from the wheel. 'Tochiro?'</p><p><em>I've got it. Between us Mimay and I can work out a way of balancing the dark matter to keep us in place</em>.</p><p>'If we get into trouble, could you at least manage a fly-past and a fast pickup?'</p><p><em>Can you try not to get into trouble</em>? Tochiro asked. <em>Just once</em>?</p><p>Ali snorted, folding his arms across the front of his sweater. 'Did you really just ask that?'</p><p>Ben slapped him on the back, between the shoulder blades. 'It has happened, right?'</p><p>'Not,' Ali retorted, 'In living memory. And where did you get my t-shirt from, you thieving git?'</p><p>The article in question read "Make love not war, see wearer for details" with a skull and crossbones printed inside a bleeding heart on the left breast, stretched tightly across broad shoulders and a firm six-pack. Ben just smirked at him. As Ali narrowed his eyes, Kei stepped between the pair before clothing became a casualty.</p><p>'Boys - if you don't mind, my son is down there?' she reminded them tartly. Both of them earned a slap to the back of their blond heads as she strode past. 'Hangar deck. Now.'</p><p>Ben cocked his head to one side to watch her sashay down the stairs. 'Ow!' He rubbed the back of his head as Harlock strode past him, having delivered another timely slap.</p><p>'That's my wife's ass you're leering at, <em>your majesty</em>.' Ben fell into place behind him, with an equally appreciative stare at Harlock's equally tight-fitting leather pants. 'And don't think I can't feel your hot sticky eyes on <em>me</em>, Ben.'</p><p>Ali caught up with his captain as they reached the foot of the steps, shoving past Ben to do it and ignoring the other man's growl. 'Why the hell do we put up with him? I mean… this isn't some game, where you can just up and go home whenever we want, but he just…'</p><p>'...that's kind of the point, Ali,' Harlock replied quietly. 'He doesn't have to stay, or put himself in harm's way. You see it that he's playing at pirate because he can walk away any time he wants, and we can't? Ask yourself rather what kind of man lays his life on the line when he <em>does</em> have another choice?'</p><p>Ali cast a look back over his shoulder at the handsome gamilan and sighed. 'One with far too much time on his bloody hands,' he grumbled. 'Why can't he just have <em>one </em>flaw? Butt ugly... batshit insane... warts on his face… a sadistic murderous bastard…'</p><p>Ben leaned into him as they walked. 'Because two Zworders is more than one universe can handle?' he asked brightly, before strolling ahead of them, hands in his pockets, whistling.</p><p>Harlock patted a snarling Ali on the back. 'Let it go and just thank our lucky stars he is sane and rational. That much power in the hands of anyone less capable and we'd all have a problem.'</p><p>Ali gave his captain a sharp, appraising look. 'You want him to wade in on our side in this, don't you?' he accused, jabbing a finger into Harlock's midsection. 'Is that why you let him tag along?'</p><p>'It's the only reason I'd take a very annoying warp comm from both Domel and Talan at two in the bloody morning to reassure them I'd take good care of the mastermind behind their secret little triumvirate,' Harlock replied a little testily. 'We're going to need a much bigger fleet to fight back against that growing metanoid fleet, or we'll never even get close to reaching the Gate of Yedar to close it.'</p><p>'Yeah, but what we're building…'</p><p>'Isn't going to be even near enough,' Harlock told him sadly, as they reached the hangar doors. 'Not even close. Before we're done we're going to have to figure how to get Andromeda on side with this as well as the Gamilans. Hell, maybe even the full resources of all of the GMC…'</p><p>'You don't think small, do you?' Ali asked under his breath as they walked towards the waiting transport and fighter planes on the hangar floor.</p><p>'Ali - we haven't had that luxury for over twenty years.'</p><p>Ali watched as he walked over to Kei and laid a hand briefly on her cheek, before heading for his black and red space wolf. Idly, he rubbed the spot on his stomach where an old wound often gave him a bit of gyp before a nasty fight. 'Not sure we ever did,' he muttered. Then he plastered a suitably chirpy grin over his face and strolled over towards the bullet. 'Just let the kid still be in one piece and breathing…' he added under his breath. 'Or someone's gonna pay…'</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Filament</em>
</p><p><em>Cold… </em>that was Wataru's impression as the small shadow coiled around him. Not the cold of a deep winter day, crisp and fresh, or even damp and miserable. Nor the cold of space. Both of these were simply the absence of warmth. Two sides of the same coin.</p><p>This…</p><p><em>It's a different coin altogether</em>, he thought, fighting the tendrils of ice that felt as though they were slithering through his veins, to his heart, lungs, brain… It came from a place that didn't even know what warmth <em>was</em>, so how could it be the opposite of something that didn't exist?</p><p>He tried to hold his breath as it slid over his face. Pointless, he knew instinctively. This wasn't something physical, part of the universe he knew. Whatever these people had become, they no longer belonged to the world they'd been torn from.</p><p><em>I'm scared</em>… the voice was that of the little girl. And he knew those words for a terrible truth even as he tried desperately to escape her cold touch, as she attempted to slide into the spaces <em>between </em>the matter that was Yûki Wataru. <em>Mama… it hurts… I can't</em>…</p><p><em>Try, dearest. Try harder</em>.</p><p>Where the hell was Guy? Surely there was <em>something </em>he could shoot at. That wasn't Wataru…</p><p>Something slid in behind his eyes like a blade; slick, colder than death, pushing, as though trying to breach some kind of barrier.</p><p>It bounced away from him with a scream of pain. He fell to his knees, as drained as if he'd finished running a bloody marathon, only dimly aware of Guy screaming something into his ear which he couldn't make out over the dead child's hysterical sobbing. He forced himself to look round, although every muscle hurt, to see Guy writhing on the ground, one of the shadows pouring over him.</p><p>He reached out, and the pool of darkness flinched.</p><p>No… not flinched, was somehow repulsed by him… He deliberately stretched his hand out and reached through the darkness to touch Guy's arm, and the shadow recoiled.</p><p>But not enough. There was no way in hell he could wrap enough of himself around his classmate to force the thing away fully. Where he didn't touch, it came back, flowing around him like water flowing past a stone in the middle of a stream. He was a minor obstacle, nothing more, and his attempts to drag Guy clear were failing miserably. His body, exhausted by its own fight against the darkness, simply lacked the strength.</p><p>'Run…' Guy forced the words out, glaring at Wataru with his usual</p><p>what-the-fuck-are-you-doing scowl. Useless, given that Wataru came from a long, if not always distinguished line of men - and women - with what might be charitably called a terminal hero complex. He kept tugging.</p><p>At the limit of his strength, close to collapsing beside Guy, he heard booted feet on the road.</p><p><em>Great… just great. Now the dial-heads were here to finish them off</em>.</p><p>But instead of a blaster to the head, the soft <em>szzaaap </em>he heard was a blast of pure light, aimed at the pooling shadows, which sprang back from them, shrinking back into the shadows. Hands were pulling both he and Guy to the relative safety of the main road, where they were unceremoniously dumped on the pavement. Bleary eyed, Wataru stared up at his rescuers. Five men and a woman in the combat armour of the SDF stared down at him, helmets retracted.</p><p>Captain Todo stared down at him, a long-suffering sigh escaping his lips as he shook his head. 'Just what,' he ground out, 'do you two idiots think you were doing? We had to track you down when we found the plane abandoned…'</p><p>'Thought we'd try rescuing you,' Guy replied, trying to prop himself up against the nearest wall.</p><p>'Idiot!' Todo snapped. 'Do we look as though we needed rescuing? Unlike you two, although I can imagine whose idea it was to start wandering about instead of waiting for retrieval…'</p><p>Wataru kept his head down and said nothing. It wasn't as though he could actually refute the suggestion, after all.</p><p>'Help them up,' Todo told two of the men with him. They hauled the pair to their feet, none too gently. 'And let's get the hell out of this city.'</p><p>'Sir?' One of the crew pointed back down the alley. 'That shadow's on the move…'</p><p>Wataru turned to watch, and shook off the helping hand of the crewman who'd helped him up. 'That's not a shadow…' he said tightly. 'I suggest we run for it.'</p><p>'Yûki?' Todo inquired.</p><p>'That's a whole pile of corpses which that shadow is trying to animate…'</p><p>'Will the lights work on those?' The speaker was another cadet - a blonde girl who always reminded Wataru un-nervingly of his mother. She had addressed her question to a</p><p>sandy-haired youth he vaguely recognised from his class - a quiet lad who tended to sit at</p><p>the back.</p><p>'I'm not sure we should wait around to find out,' Wataru suggested, cutting over the conversation. The corpse pile was shifting ominously, but slowly, heaving and undulating, as parts tumbled off the pile as the more ambulatory corpses were animated. From the relatively and currently safe distance of about fifty feet, he could however see at least a couple of arms and a leg moving jerkily, like something out of a cheap warp vid. 'They're dropping to bits but I think some of them could do some damage. And ordinary guns don't do much except blast bits off them.'</p><p>'I'm not sure I want to ask how you know this,' the sandy haired cadet said with studied blandness.</p><p>'Your photon beams did some damage,' Wataru pointed out.</p><p>'Moot point,' Guy said. He pointed. 'The cavalry just arrived - not ours, though.'</p><p>Along the road, seven mounted machinners were riding towards them, cutting off their escape, unless they headed deeper into the town. And they hadn't a prayer of escaping a mounted charge once they were spotted. The group didn't appear to have notice anything out of the ordinary yet - possibly, Wataru realised, because they'd been busy stuffing dark matter ghosts into the leftovers from their life-force harvesting of the survey ship's crew for several days and probably mistook them for reboots.</p><p>Todo checked the charge in his pistol. 'Form up around me, people. Murase, Bulge, Reinhardt - Zombies. Everyone else, with me. Yûki - are you still toting that anti-dialhead hand-cannon your father gave you?'</p><p>Wataru took a firm grip on his pistol. 'Sir.'</p><p>'Then put it to good use. Fire at will - and try not to take out the horses.'</p><p>'Any reason?' Guy drawled.</p><p>Todo smiled grimly. 'Yes. The ATVs are drained and I'm not fond of walking five miles back to the ship.'</p><p>Guy shrugged. 'Well hell.. Why didn't <em>you </em>think of stealing the horses, Yûki?'</p><p>'Last time I checked, Lawrence, it wasn't his job to do your thinking for you,' Todo drawled. Guy flushed, and the sandy-haired cadet started to laugh and turned it into a cough - but he stared down Guy's evil eye without flinching, Wataru noticed.</p><p>Then the shooting started.</p><hr/><p>Murase, Wataru mused twenty minutes later, was a grade one arse with serious</p><p>impulse-control issues, no sense of self preservation and dangerously unaware of the effect of that on unlucky bystanders. An observation Captain Todo was voicing more than adequately as they rode their borrowed - <em>stolen </em>- steeds as fast as they dared back to where the <em>Sirius </em>was grounded.</p><p>One of those casualties was still lying on the dusty road of that nameless city. Another was clinging onto Guy's waist for dear life, his breathing sounding more laboured by the second. And then as if the universe didn't think they were struggling enough, the sandy-haired cadet's - Bulge's - horse put a hoof into a rabbit-hole and went arse over tip, only narrowly missing the hapless cadet, who was thrown clear of the thrashing robot.</p><p>'Captain!' Wataru hailed his commanding officer, jumping from his own horse and rushing to the youth's side, trying to avoid the flailing robotic hooves. What made it worse, he thought, was that the damn thing was so bloody quiet… a real horse would have been squealing its head off. It looked enough like a real horse to make him feel more than a little queasy, even the reminder of the large round glowing dial in the middle of its forehead.</p><p>He dragged Bulge out of harm's way, and unholstered his pistol. One quick shot was all it took to still the damaged creature. Thing. Whatever you wanted to call it. Thankfully these mechanical beasts were straight up robots, not subject to the same processes that made</p><p>their human masters. Animals tended to go completely psychotic if put through the soul forges.</p><p><em>Which should have told them something</em>, Wataru mused sourly, as he checked his classmate over.</p><p>'Sorry for the unceremonious drag 'n' drop,' he told Bulge, who stared up at him glassily. 'I didn't think your head would survive both the ground and a flying kick.'</p><p>'I'm fine.' Bulge tried to struggle to his feet, fell into a heap, went very pale and promptly threw up. Wataru - a veteran of numerous nights out with his brothers and honourary cousins in the company of the Arcadia's crew or the odd slumming Millennial Thief, knew the signs well enough to neatly dodge before his boots took the brunt. 'Sorry.'</p><p>'What for? You missed. I swear my brother aims for my boots on purpose…' It earned him a sickly grin. 'Captain - we can't make him ride back to the ship like this. He can't put any weight on that leg and he's taken a knock to the head.'</p><p>'I can manage…' Bulge tried to stand but met with a firm hand on his shoulder from Wataru. He took the hint and stayed put.</p><p>'Yûki's right,' Todo told him firmly. 'Tanaka - take the rest back to the ship, then see if we have another vehicle with enough juice to make the return trip - this planet seems to be hard on the batteries. Yûki - head for that stand of trees we just passed- we need some cover.'</p><p>Wataru managed to get Bulge to his feet, his classmate clinging to the fabric of his flightsuit at his waist. A pained hiss and a flinch when he put his arm around the youth's waist to steady him suggested it wasn't just his leg and head that had taken a knock in the fall. 'Ribs?' he asked quietly.</p><p>'Probably,' was the equally quiet reply. 'I think I landed on a rock…'Sir… the shadows…' Bulge pointed at the ground near that small copse, covered by a faint grey pool with a mandelbrot feathering on the leading edge.</p><p>'Are pointing towards it - not coming from it, cadet. And you're looking greyer by the minute. You won't make it on horseback in this state. I'm amazed you've not fallen over again.'</p><p>'I'm not,' Wataru replied in a pitch-perfect imitation of his father's lazy drawl as he guided his charge carefully over to the small copse. 'He's almost crushing my ribcage… Been working out, Bulge?'</p><p>'Dont. Make. Me. Laugh,' was the raspy reply.</p><p>Dry leaves rustled overhead as Wataru helped his classmate to lie down on a pile of dry leaves against the trunk of the closest tree. Bulge's eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, with a slight hitch as he breathed in. Blood trickled from a cut that ran from his hairline through his right eyebrow. 'Hang on in there,' Wataru told him gently. 'Captain… I don't think I've got much in my pack to deal…'</p><p>'I have.' Julia Reinhardt swung a leg over her horse's back and slid gracefully to the ground. She slipped off her backpack and knelt beside them. 'I had Murase as my team leader. It's always best to be prepared.'</p><p>'Reinhardt, you were ordered…' Todo began. She waved him off with one hand as she rummaged in her pack for supplies. 'Technically, sir, you ordered lieutenant Tanaka to <em>take </em>us back - you didn't <em>specifically </em>order anyone to go <em>with </em>him…'</p><p>'Reinhardt, with that attention to the small print, you should have taken up a career in law', Todo told her dryly.</p><p>'Or piracy,' Bulge added from his position on the ground. His eyes fluttered open and he tried very hard not to laugh at Wataru's attempt to keep any reaction from showing on his face. 'Please, Yûki - it's the worst kept secret in the Academy. You and your brother are dead ringers for Harlock. Especially Mamoru.'</p><p>'The girls certainly noticed,' Reinhardt said as she pushed Bulge's hands away from his jacket. 'Your dad's Wanted poster is the third bestseller on campus - well, second amongst the female demographic. Swan - I need to get in there. I can assure you there's nothing under your uniform I haven't already seen in the showers.'</p><p>Wataru left them to it and drew his captain to one side. 'Sir - With all due respect, I think you should go back to the ship. Reinhardt and I should be enough to take care of Bulge until you send someone back for us.'</p><p>Todo smiled at him. 'Yûki - has anyone never told you that no sentence that starts with "With all due respect" ever ends well for the speaker?'</p><p>'Hannibal… Blaze… Yanez… Nero... ' Wataru pantomimed ticked off the names on his fingers. 'Mom… Professor Oedo…'</p><p>'Long and distinguished,' Todo replied. 'I notice your father isn't on that list…'</p><p>'Probably because he doesn't give a shit as long as people do what they have to do,' Wataru replied without thinking. 'Sir.. I didn't…'</p><p>'Relax, Yûki,' Todo told him with a laugh. 'I don't mind anyone speaking their mind either. But I've worked with your father and he would be the first to point out that when you have talented people who are very good at their jobs, you put them to work and don't get in their way. I can't help my team get the <em>Sirius </em>off the ground, but I can take care of the cadets in my care - and continue evaluating them to see how they perform under pressure.'</p><p>'Not looking good for the second part of that, is it?' Bulge opined from his position on the ground. 'I fall on my head, Reinhardt disobeys orders, Yuki runs into danger like it's going out of fashion, Lawrence has a stick up his ass…'</p><p>'And Murase?' Todo asked with a slight smile.</p><p>'Worst traits of all four of us,' Reinhardt responded primly. 'Without Bulge's smarts, my analytical skills, Lawrence's respect for the rules or Yuki's ability to fly by the seat of his pants.'</p><p>'Not so smart.' Bulge turned over a small device in his hands as he patiently allowed Reinhardt to patch him up. 'I couldn't get the battery on this thing to keep a charge… And that shadow's drawing closer…'</p><p>'Let me see.' Wataru knelt next to his fellow cadet and reached out a hand. Bulge handed over the object - a long, thick and heavy flashlight at first glance. 'I've seen the plans for this…'</p><p>'The SDF has been experimenting with some of the ideas the Millennial Thieves have been drip-feeding us ever since that Ventimiglia debacle two years ago,' Todo told him from his vantage point on the edge of the small copse. 'Portable photonic emitter.'</p><p>'Ray gun,' Bulge and Wataru replied at the same time, and grinned at each other. Reinhardt sighed, shook her head and carried on prodding her charge. 'One of Zee's ideas,' Wataru continued. He flipped the battery compartment and grinned. 'Thankfully, I know what your problem is.' He flicked out the dead power source, and took an almost identical one out of his utility pouch. A practiced flick clicked it into place. 'There.' He handed the device back to Bulge. 'I should have thought of it earlier when I realised my gun still worked but my torch didn't. I thought it was the light it swallowed up, but these emitters work on a different wavelength against the darkness, so logically…'</p><p>'A new battery?'</p><p>'One of the spare powerpacks from my cosmo gun,' Wataru corrected with a grin. 'My dad's engineers designed these to take a standard power pack, and our packs have the same casings as the SDF standard - just - well - a little more oomph.'</p><p>'Is that even a technical term?' Reinhardt asked dryly. 'Never mind,' she cut Wataru off before he could answer. 'Any more of those?'</p><p>Wataru pulled out a couple more and handed her one, palming another into his cosmo gun to replace the depleted power pack. 'Don't use them in your own guns,' he warned her. 'They'll work in those photon beam generators, because those are our tech - Tochiro's weapons are built to take the power, yours aren't.'</p><p>She slapped the pack into her own device. 'Gotcha. You know - you're rather more useful to have around than I thought.'</p><p>'I'm almost afraid to ask what you did think of me,' he told her.</p><p>Bulge answered. 'Decorative, I think was the word. Ow!' he glared and rubbed his arm where she'd flicked him.</p><p>'You really do remind me of my mother,' Wataru said under his breath. Bulge sniggered and Reinhardt glared at them both. 'It's a compliment!' he called out belatedly, half laughing as she left them to stride over to their captain.'</p><p>'I don't think there's a woman born who likes hearing she reminds a guy of his mother,' Bulge told him with a sly smile. 'Bad enough you never even notice her…'</p><p>Wataru spluttered slightly. 'Seriously? I'm <em>engaged</em>…'</p><p>A shrug, which Bulge instantly regretted, judging by his flinch. 'You can't be completely oblivious to the fact that there isn't a woman in the academy - and several guys for that matter - and I do include the faculty in that - who doesn't stare at you whenever you walk into a room?'</p><p>'I rather thought that might be because of the aforementioned problem of being related to the most notorious space pirate in the bloody galaxy,' Wataru drawled. 'My dad's poster is plastered over more bedroom walls than I care to think about, and my mother's over just as many that I really <em>don't </em>want to think about.'</p><p>Bulge flushed and coughed.</p><p>'Oh… for… Please tell me it's mom and not…' Bulge just raised an eyebrow and said smiled enigmatically. Wataru narrowed his eyes. 'You're not as quiet and mousey as you try to make out…'</p><p>'You're not the jock that you get taken for. Seems we both made assumptions…'</p><p>'I don't hang out with them, they insist on hanging out with me,' Wataru protested. 'Guy's been hanging around with us since we were kids.'</p><p>'We all have our burdens,' Bulge opined, totally deadpanned. Wataru spluttered. 'Schwanheldt.' Bulge held out his hand. 'My friends call me Swan for short, if it helps.'</p><p>'Wataru.' He shook the offered hand. 'You really got stuck with that, didn't you?'</p><p>'I've seen your ancestor's official record - you're lucky your family changed their name…'</p><p>'Yeah. Never been happier Dad went with Martian brevity.'</p><p>'They use one name don't they? So where does "Yûki" come from?'</p><p>'This end of space likes a bit more formality. Grampy said it was mom's grandparent's family name so we went with that for the official records.'</p><p>'Ah.' Bulge stared around, then frowned. 'Wataru… the shadows near that tree over there are flickering. The one that looks like…'</p><p>'I see it,' Wataru said quietly. 'Captain?' he called out softly. When he had Todo's attention he continued: 'Either you or Reinhardt got anything in your canteens?'</p><p>'I have.' Reinhardt tossed him the bottle, which he caught one handed by the strap with ease. 'Thirsty?'</p><p>'Nope. I think we might need an insurance policy.' He walked over to the tree Bulge had pointed out, and knelt at the foot of it, where one knotted root had worked its way to the surface, as dry and knotted as the dead tree it had once served. There he opened the water bottle and sprinkled some of its contents on the ground, where it was quickly soaked up.</p><p>'Hey!' Reinhardt snapped. 'We might need that!'</p><p>'Relax. It's just a trickle,' he told her. 'A token.' He placed a hand on the rough, flaking bark of the dead tree. 'If you're like the human ghosts… still watching,' he whispered. 'In the name of Queen Rafflesia, second of that name, we ask for your protection.'</p><p>'Yûki…' Reinhardt sounded nervous. 'The shadows…'</p><p>He could see for himself, and watched without fear as those at the foot of the great tree rippled and drew back from him. 'I know,' he replied calmly. 'This was a mazone grove. And this…' his hands wandered gently over the bark, tracing the curves and lines of what, even in the crepuscular gloom of Filament's black sun, looked like the face of a woman from the angle he was looking at. 'Was its guardian. Even in death, they protect. They're not like us…'</p><p>'I thought your experience of them wasn't very positive?' Todo asked, not taking his eyes off the shadows gathering around and outside the grove.</p><p>'That faction no longer exists. And we met a lot who were gentle and sweet natured. More since they took up their guardianship of Earth.'</p><p>'You're not afraid their ghosts might try to kill and reboot us?'</p><p>He shook his head. 'Well if I'm wrong it'll probably be too late to say "I told you so."' 'And at this point you really do start to sound like your father…' Todo drawled.</p><p>'That's no bad thing,' Bulge opined from his position on the ground. Wataru leaned against</p><p>the tree that was propping his classmate up, although he kept a weather eye out for the flickering shadows.</p><p>'You sound as though you've had first hand experience.'</p><p>'I did. About ten years ago, on New Geneva, after the Machinners' transports had gone. The <em>Arcadia </em>turned up to wipe out a bunch of Doppler Corp ships that moved in to mop up the survivors.'</p><p>Wataru didn't have to try too hard to do the maths. Bulge would have been nine - too young for the soulforges, but just the right age for Doppler Corps slave ships to move in and fill their holds with the children left behind. 'How long after?'</p><p>'Three months.'</p><p>Wataru laid a hand on the young man's shoulder. 'That would have gutted him. He always hates being too late.'</p><p>'Yeah. I got that.' Bulge looked up at Wataru, a bleak look on his face. 'My sister had died that morning, I was still sitting with her body. I just couldn't move, and the battle was coming closer. I was stupidly out in the open, no real cover, and he took a shot that would have taken my dumb head off. Just took a step back, rallied, and blew the bastard's head off, then picked me up like a sack of vegetables and made a run for the shuttle. I remember the look on his face then, and it scared me witless.'</p><p>'Yeah… he can be a bit intense, sorry.'</p><p>Bulge smiled. 'Oh… I get that. That's not what I remember most though. It was afterwards, when we waited for the SDF transports to arrive. Him… and your mother… along with half their crew I think, just making sure several hundred scared kids were okay. Handing out meal packets and hugs, and trying to smile for us even though you could see they felt sick to their stomachs. And there's this guy - the big bad Captain Harlock, sitting next to me with blood on his face, matting his hair telling me how he couldn't make it right, and he was sorry, but if I wanted he'd take me to see where they'd bury my sister before we left. All that hurt, after a huge battle, and he remembered one kid, and why I'd been where I was.' He smiled sadly 'I knew what I wanted to be one day, that day.'</p><p>'Not a pirate, I'm guessing?' Wataru said lightly, not sure how to react. Bulge shook his head.</p><p>'No. Someone who could make sure no-one had to have that look in their eyes that I saw in his that day. No one should have to clean up that kind of crap, let alone live through it. Our parents had either deserted us or been torn from us. Hell, most of us would never know which ours had been, and honestly - no-one <em>wanted </em>to know. I live in a world where people put a price on a man's head for showing them that what they're doing is wrong, and showing them what they <em>should </em>be doing. They hate him for it. What the hell is that about? Hell, he even paid for my fees for the Academy - I'd have thought he would have forgotten one lost kid by now.'</p><p>'There's been a fund set up since the war,' Wataru replied softly.</p><p>'Over and above that,' Bulge replied. 'A six months ago, out of the blue, I was working part time in a local café to make ends meet, because the cost of living on Destiny is bloody stupid, and he shows up - without the patch though. Bought a coffee, asked me what my plans were. Next thing I know I'm getting a call saying my fees, lodgings… everything - all paid for plus an allowance to get me through to graduation - even a bit beyond if I'm frugal - and I am.'</p><p>Six months put the time frame to not long after his parents had returned from Herise, and whatever shit had gone down there that they flat out refused to discuss, but had something to do with his ersatz ex-uncle and a machine that could show you different timelines. That his parents had seen something there that had sent their father off to expose a spectacularly dangerous use of dimensional oscillator tech wasn't much of a secret. The <em>why </em>however was something everyone involved been remarkably tight-lipped about. And had involved some seriously out of character hugging… His father had a lousy poker face, and that dimensional tunneling was something the SDF and the new Galaxy Railways had been involved in, so it wasn't a great leap to suspect it had to do with <em>his </em>future.</p><p>He really <em>wasn't </em>as slow on the uptake as family members sometimes laughingly accused him of. He just didn't bother shouting out to the world how great he was - he tended to leave that to Mamoru, because one overly dramatic arse per generation was enough, thank you very much. So he just shrugged and murmured something about his dad just being that kind of guy, and didn't voice the suspicion that it was highly likely Bulge had featured somewhere in that nightmare scenario, and in a good way… <em>So much so, you felt you had to make extra sure he's close to me, dad</em>? Inwardly he shivered slightly. <em>What the hell did you see that was so bad you felt you had to make that call</em>…? Because his father's feelings on interfering with time were pretty well documented.</p><p>'Wataru?'</p><p>'Hmm?'</p><p>'You look like someone just walked over your grave…'</p><p>Wataru tried to grin reassuringly at his classmate, though judging from the raised eyebrow, it failed dismally. 'Nothing much.' He caught the whisper of a noise on the wind that sounded terribly familiar. 'Do you hear that?'</p><p>'Wind in the trees?' Bulge suggested. 'No. Coming closer… Captain!'</p><p>'I hear it,' Todo assured him. 'Planes?'</p><p>Wataru grinned. 'Bulge - your flashlight thing?' he grabbed it and ran to the edge of the grove. 'Better than that - I'd know that sound anywhere - it's the <em>Arcadia's </em>Space Wolves!'</p><p>He flicked on the photonic emitter and started waving it around into the dark sky. 'Captain - I think the cavalry really did arrive this time!'</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Flying the space wolf against the tide of dark matter space was like riding one of Tabito's resident heavy horses and trying to move in a direction it didn't want to go. The animals were mostly used for heavy haulage in areas where vehicles just couldn't safely go, and whilst driving them wasn't generally hard work, riding them was universally acknowledged as hard work. The space wolf usually handled (and Harlock at least had to mostly take Hannibal's word for this, as his own experience was limited to the few worlds that had maintained draft horses) "like a well-trained arab": light, responsive, elegant.</p><p>Right now, Harlock would have just settled for "steers like a cow".</p><p>'Tell me I'm not the only one wondering why my ship's handling like a beached flumper,' he heard Ben mutter over the comms as they broke atmosphere and began their descent to the surface. In the turbulent heat-stream of their re-entry, the fighters wobbled until the stabilisers kicked in - a couple of seconds of nausea inducing juddering from stem to stern.</p><p>'Flumper?' Kei asked over the comms.</p><p>'Large, blubbery creature native to the seas of Iskander. A bit like a whale, but with a brain the size of a peanut…'</p><p>'I think you answered your own question,' Ali quipped. Harlock was glad no-one - especially Ben - could see his grin. 'But that's a relief - I thought for a moment you were talking about your favourite concubine…'</p><p>'Walked right into that one, didn't I?' the gamilan replied dryly. 'Harlock - I've got a beacon - SDF ident, bearing 0375. The <em>Sirius</em>. It's on the ground, engines cold. There's a large conurbation about five miles from it. No life signs in the city though.'</p><p>'Let me guess - plenty of organic matter?' Kei asked.</p><p>'Carbon… H2O… potassium…'</p><p>''We get the picture, Ben,' Harlock told him quietly. He fought the fighter onto the new heading. 'Damn - I thought this would be easier inside the gravity well, but it's still fighting us. I'm going in over the <em>Sirius </em>for a pass. Kei, Ben - with me. Ali - hold your position, but keep sweeping for that survey ship.'</p><p>'Gotcha, captain. By the way, Luna says there <em>are </em>life signs on board the <em>Sirius </em>- she makes it a full complement or thereabouts.'</p><p>'I think I found your "thereabouts.' Ben broke into the comms. 'Three clicks north north west of that city. Someone's using a torch to send a morse signal…'</p><p>'Not a torch, 'Harlock replied, after a look at his own sensors. 'That's one of our photon new emitters…'</p><p>'O...v...e...r… … h...e...r...e… … d...a...d…' Ben laughed out loud. 'Well it beats SOS I suppose.'</p><p>'Hardly professional,' Harlock replied a little sniffily. 'I taught him better than that…'</p><p>'At least we know it's him and not someone trying to lure us down,' Kei pointed out as she angled her fighter towards the signal. 'Or a reboot.'</p><p>Harlock's radio silence after that comment spoke louder than any words. For once even Ali forbore to make a snarky comment at his expense.</p><p>They brought the space wolves down into a neat touchdown about half a mile from the copse the signal had been beamed from, and Harlock was already jumping down from the cockpit as Kei then Ben dropped their respective planes next to his black-and-red pride and joy - although in the peculiar no-light of the black sun, the difference between the sharp red/black, black/red paintwork of his and Kei's planes and the generic dull green of the basic models wasn't at all obvious. Even so…</p><p>'Was shit green <em>really </em>the best you could do for the basecoat?' he asked over the comms. A ghostly chuckle was Tochiro's immediate reply. <em>I'll have you know that's military issue khaki</em>, his central computer answered with a giggle. <em>The 3-D printers still haven't run through the stash we had on board when the ships left the dry dock - and good luck telling Kei you want to dump perfectly good supplies because you don't like the colour</em>…</p><p>Harlock chuckled as he strode over to his beloved XO, occasioning some eye-rolling from the Gamilan, and a raised eyebrow from Kei.</p><p>'What's so funny?' she asked. She was already unholstering one of her over-sized sidearms, but he leaned closer and gave her a peck on the cheek. 'Hmm.' Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.</p><p>He unpacked his own pistol without enlightening her. 'I think the welcome committee is on its way.' With the unencumbered hand he pointed to the trees, where two figures were walking towards them. One of them broke into a run, and within seconds Kei was practically tackled to the ground by six feet of solid muscle. 'Mom!'</p><p>'I notice <em>you </em>don't get glomped,' Ben murmured out of the corner of his mouth. Kei was engulfed in a bear hug, barely able to let out more than an oof, before being let go and the perpetrator turned his attention to his father and repeated the attack. Ben shrugged his shoulders. 'I stand corrected…' he added sotto-voce. Wataru, if he wasn't mistaken, had shot up considerably in the last couple of years, and unless it was their boots, or Harlock was standing in a dip, the kid was probably an inch or two taller than his father now - and at six-one, Harlock wasn't exactly short. And there was something amusing about seeing the quiet pirate captain being pounce-tackled with such enthusiasm.</p><p>'Breathing would be useful,' Harlock gasped out. Wataru let him go with a mumbled apology. The young man turned a vibrant, welcoming grin on Ben. 'Good to see you too, Ben. Or should I call you Your Excellency?'</p><p>'Don't even think it. No hug?' Ben pouted. 'I'm hurt, Wataru.'</p><p>'You'll get over it,' Harlock told him dryly, steering Wataru away and towards the SDF captain standing nearby. 'Todo. Glad to see you haven't got any ideas about hugging me half to death.'</p><p>'Wouldn't dream of it,' Todo replied with an obvious effort at keeping a straight face. 'I hear Kei gets a little protective.' He did offer his hand though, first to Harlock then to Kei. 'You're a welcome sight, Harlock - how the hell did you get here so fast? Last I heard you were in the Sol System, and that's a couple of weeks away…'</p><p>'I was, and it is.' Harlock's eye narrowed. 'Just how long have you been here?'</p><p>'Twenty-two hours, sixteen minutes.' The reply came from the young woman who'd walked over whilst they were talking. Ben looked her over appreciatively. Late teens, early twenties at most. From the cadet uniform, probably the former. Her uniform hugged an athletic figure no less enticing than Kei's, and her long fair hair was pulled into a high ponytail to keep it under control. 'You - eyeballs!' she snapped, pointing an imperious digit in Ben's direction. When everyone else stared at her in shock then started making choking noises as they tried to avoid laughing, she glared at them. 'What?'</p><p>'Oh my...who knew they didn't break the mould?' Harlock murmured close to Ben's ear. Kei led the young woman out of earshot and whispered into her ear, the young woman first turning a little pale, then blushing as she looked Ben over from head to toe and noticed his smirk and wink in reply. 'Stop that,' he told Ben.</p><p>'Me?'</p><p>Harlock ignored Ben's insincere indignation. 'Todo - it's been two weeks. We came as soon as we heard.'</p><p>'What's the situation from the outside of the rift?'</p><p>'Stable, for now. But the time difference suggests this is a pretty deep rip this planet's fallen into. We're having trouble getting the <em>Arcadia</em> close - it seems to be pushing us away, as though we're caught in a current.'</p><p>'That current dragged <em>us </em>in,' Wataru told him. 'You think the <em>Arcadia's </em>dark matter is somehow working against her?'</p><p>'That's the theory so far. It's why we came down in the planes. Ali's hovering in the bullet.'</p><p>'Your shuttle?' Todo asked. Harlock nodded. 'We'll need it, if you don't mind - I've got a wounded cadet back there.'</p><p>The young woman paled. 'Oh, shit… Bulge!' She dashed back to the copse. Harlock gave Ben a quick jerk of his head. Nodding once, the gamilan set off after the girl.</p><p>'You have the leader of New Gamilas running errands for you?' Todo asked. He shook his head. 'Only you…'</p><p>'Long story,' Harlock replied dryly. 'We go back a long way. He can seem a bit of a fribble but it's mostly an act.'</p><p>'I love the way you qualify that, dad,' Wataru drawled. But you might want to follow him - the shadows around here aren't exactly friendly…'</p><p>'Metanoids?'</p><p>'Nah. It's just the way I walk…' Ali's gruff drawl called out from behind him. Wataru failed to bite back a laugh.</p><p>'I should have known you'd be following Dad around like a lost puppy, Ali.'</p><p>'I don't recall ordering him to land,' Harlock muttered, without turning around. Ali slapped him between the shoulder blades, failing to stagger his captain, who'd pretty much learned to brace for impact over the years. Ali was as predictable as a pulsar.</p><p>'But I did anyways because I was monitoring the chatter, and Todo's bunch weren't on a secure channel. Apparently you've got an injured bulge?' He sniggered.</p><p>'Bul-ge,' Wataru corrected him, his tone so like his mother's Harlock had to turn away slightly to hide a smile. 'One of my classmates, that's two syllables, and try not to be an arse. For once? He's a nice guy.'</p><p>'With a really, really unfortunate name,' Ali pointed out.</p><p>'Only in your head,' Wataru replied smartly. He glanced past the burly pirate and breathed a sigh of relief. 'Doc!' he called out and waved. Luna trotted up, Anita strolling along behind her toting one of the <em>Arcadia's </em>barely man (or woman) portable artillery pieces as though it was a twig she had thrown over one well-muscled shoulder. 'Aunt Anita!'</p><p>'Wataru!' Anita's voice had a tendency to carry. 'Look at you, laddie! I swear you've shot up a couple of inches since we last saw you. Not quite sure how you do it on SDF rations mind you…'</p><p>He gave first Luna, then the burly ex SPG sergeant a hug. 'Kanna's home cooking when I rotate back to Tabito in between sessions I think. But we need to get out of here asap - I was trying to tell dad, the shadows here…'</p><p>'Seem to be a little bit agitated…' Harlock stretched out his foot and waggled the toe just out of range of the leading edge of one strange, mandelbrotian patch with no readily discernible origin.</p><p>'Dad!'</p><p>'Harlock!'</p><p>'Captain!'</p><p>'Yama!'</p><p>'Oh, stop panicking and pay attention,' he sighed, placing his foot back on the dried grass safely out of reach. 'I think it's more scared of me than I need to be of it…'</p><p>'They didn't like me much either,' Wataru said softly, standing at his shoulder 'I thought it might be because of the dark matter…'</p><p>Ali shouldered his way past the young man and waved his hand next to the curling edges of the shivering shadow. Flickers of blue flame curled around his outstretched gloved hand and the shadow recoiled. 'I can't push past a certain point either,' he told his captain. 'It's like the ship - as though you're trying to push two like poles of a magnet together.'</p><p>'It tried… one in the town tried… to take me over, but couldn't get a hold on me.' Wataru shuddered and smiled gratefully at his father when Harlock laid a hand on his shoulder. 'These things… shadows… it's not like Mamoru described - not dark storms. These… I supposed you'd call them ghosts? I'm fairly sure the ones I encountered were a mother and her little girl. The mother was trying to give her daughter a new body. I think they are the people who died when the planet was hit by whatever shifted it into this space. There's a mazone ghost back in that grove, but that seems uninterested in humans, and I think it has no love for the other shadows - it was keeping them at bay when I asked it nicely.'</p><p>Ben was leaving the shelter of the copse, Julia hovering at his side and Bulge's arm draped over his shoulders as he helped the young man to walk. Harlock strode over, Luna hard on his heels and helped Ben get the cadet over to the ramp of the bullet, where he sat down with a sigh of pained relief. 'Thanks.' He noticed who'd been assisting and flushed. 'Captain. I mean, sir…'</p><p>Harlock laughed, and had to resist the temptation to do what he'd have done to his offspring, and ruffle the young man's already untidy hair. 'Relax, Bulge. I'm not in your chain of command, you don't have to sir me. In any case, I don't hold any military rank.'</p><p>'Not <em>quite </em>true,' Todo replied, coming up behind him and sitting next to his charge as Luna looked him over. When she asked for a knife the <em>Sirius' </em>crew - even Wataru - flinched, but Ali handed his over without a qualm and just shook his head.</p><p>'She needs to get his boot off. Sheesh. What kind of bastards do you think we are?' He vanished into the interior of the craft, grumbling away.</p><p>'What do you mean?' Wataru, unfortunately, was obviously going to be like a dog with a bone over Todo's off the cuff remark.</p><p>'He's technically still a lieutenant in the former Gaia Fleet.'</p><p>'I thought he was court-martialed?' Wataru asked with a frown.</p><p>'Oh no.' Kei smiled sweetly and slapped her captain/husband on the shoulder, ignoring his shut-the-fuck-up glare. 'See they can't strip him of his rank until he's been court-martialed, but if they strip him of his rank, then he has to be tried in a civilian court. <em>If </em>they ever catch him. The government wants the latter, but doesn't have the right to apply a purely military administrative punishment, and the military won't do it because <em>they'd </em>rather hold the kangaroo court and be the ones to put him in front of a firing squad. And before you ask, some quirk of the original Gaia Fleet laws means he can't be tried in absentia either.'</p><p>'Never mind, Harlock,' Ben said solicitously, patting his captain on the back. 'When I get home I'll give you an honorary promotion. I'm sure I can shuffle an admiral or two around to fit you in.'</p><p>'You really think that rank matters to me?'</p><p>'That rule…' Wataru mused. 'Would that mean that technically, my ghostie great-great-grandfather is still a commodore? And would be your commanding officer?' He dodged the half-hearted swat that earned him with a laugh. 'I'll just keep watch for shadows or stray machinners, shall I?'</p><p>'Remind me again that you don't give a shit about rank?' Kei whispered into Harlock's ear. 'Your ass is so tightly clenched right now I'd be amazed if you could walk…' She gave him a peck on the cheek and strolled off to keep watch with her son. Bulge, innocent instigator, looked up at the pirate captain unhappily.</p><p>'Sorry. I didn't realise…'</p><p>'Ignore them,' Harlock told him with a world-weary sigh. 'I always try to. Nice to see you again, but didn't realise you had the same talent for getting into trouble that my offspring have…' He tapped Luna on the shoulder to get her attention. 'How is he?'</p><p>'The ankle's badly swollen but not broken. A lot of bruising to the ribs, a couple of punctures and that head wound looks worse than it is, though I'll put a couple of stitches in it to be safe, but he'll need a full scan when he gets back to his own ship, unless we're taking them all with us?'</p><p>'I hope not. I didn't get Anita to replenish the stores before we left.' Harlock turned his attention back to Todo. 'Heigoro - what is the situation with <em>Sirius</em>?'</p><p>'We have power but can't get her off the ground. It occurred to me when you showed up… don't you have a tractor array capable of towing a capital class ship?'</p><p>Harlock looked thoughtful. 'We do… but that was in zero-g… not sure if it would lift the <em>Sirius </em>out of a gravity well. Ali!'</p><p>A blond head peered around the doorway of the bullet's small hangar. 'Yeah?' Harlock outlined the question. 'Ooh… good call… it might work. I'll get on the comms to the brains of the outfit. If nothing else they'll relish the challenge.' He disappeared again.</p><p>'If not,' Harlock told Todo, we'll be able to ferry your people up in a pinch. It's not that far to a planet we can drop you off to wait for pickup. But the ship you came to rescue?'</p><p>Todo shook his head. 'We hadn't located it when I left to track down Yûki and Lawrence. Wataru and Guy spotted some very fresh reboots, which doesn't bode well. The machinners appeared to be chasing the crew for their life force, and letting the ghosts have the corpses.'</p><p>Ben frowned. 'Ghosts? So the people who died here can possess the dead as well?' He grimaced. 'And I thought dealing with extra-dimensional body snatchers sounded bad…'</p><p>'It might well be the same phenomena,' Bulge said from his perch on the ramp. With a couple of painkillers courtesy of Luna in him, he seemed a lot perkier. 'They died when this planet was torn out of our space into this, right? If this is the same space/time those metanoids come from, or related to it in some way, then doesn't it make sense that maybe they might be something similar?'</p><p>'Some property of that space/time makes such lifeforms possible?' Harlock mused. 'Not that it helps much.'</p><p>'Understanding your enemy always helps,' Ben replied dryly. 'Or so Domel keeps telling me. Personally I'm happy as long as my understanding covers things like vulnerable body parts.'</p><p>'Are they always like this?' Bulge whispered to Luna, who was putting the finishing touches to a couple of butterfly sutures on his forehead.</p><p>'Like calls to like,' Luna replied with a smile. She stripped off her gloves, stuffed them into the disposal unit in her back and pushed her glasses back up her nose. 'Our captain has a habit of making friends just as ridic… of a similar mindset.'</p><p>'And a crew that's pretty disrespectful?' the younger man pulled a face. 'How does he keep you all on track?'</p><p>'By making sure everyone knows where the lines are,' Harlock replied. 'And I don't keep people who can't figure that out for themselves. A good crew <em>doesn't </em>need micromanaging…' His soft, pleasant voice carried in the still air, as did the loud, unladylike snort from the direction Kei was standing.</p><p>'Or you have an XO who has to pick up the slack so <em>you </em>can always look like either the Voice of Reason or the One Who's Even Scarier,' she called out.</p><p>'I <em>really </em>like her.' The blonde cadet tossed her ponytail back over her shoulder and stared admiring at Kei.</p><p>'She's a <em>pirate</em>,' Bulge pointed out. Then remembering the company he coughed. 'Erm… I mean…'</p><p>'I'm used to it. Don't fret.' Harlock smiled down at him, and Wataru rolled his eyes. Really, his old man was a shamelessly manipulative bastard sometimes. That winsomely incandescent smile combined with the tousled mess of his hair falling over his patch made him look like the boy next door, and shaved a good ten years off his already much-younger-than-his-age looks. It had disarmed and discombobulated tougher prey than poor Bulge over the years. 'Stop that,' he told his father. 'You're just confusing him.' The Raised Eyebrow of Puzzled Innocence made its appearance and Wataru shook his head in mock despair. 'Honestly. I can deal with people knowing I'm related to the most notorious pirate ever to sail the sea of space, but it's another thing entirely for my classmates to find out you're actually rather ridiculous.'</p><p>'-ly cute?' Ben appended with an air of facetious innocence that rivalled Harlock's. 'Harlock - when you're done trying to bamboozle the next generation of SDF officers into totally underestimating you, I think we just found the crew of that survey ship. There's a small group of life-signs about ten clicks north of here, and since we're here, everyone on the planet's already dead, and the <em>Sirius </em>is over there…' he gestured vaguely in a south-easterly direction with his cosmo dragoon 'I think we can safely assume there's a handful of survivors.'</p><p>'After all this time?' Todo frowned. 'From what I saw in the town there are a fair number of machinners who weren't killed by the dark matter wave but no humans. According to Yûki and Lawrence's reports the machinners were stripping the lifeforce out of the survivors, and it doesn't go that far.'</p><p>'They're probably held and rationed,' Wataru suggested. 'Plus this lot seem to enjoy hunting their prey, before handing over what's left to the shadows.'</p><p>'Well we can easily see how much they like being on the receiving end for a change.' Harlock patted the butt of his pistol.</p><p>Bulge shivered. 'That's not a reassuring image,' he pointed out.</p><p>Harlock smiled blandly. 'Wasn't supposed to be. Despite what the propaganda machine for Promethium would have people believe, exchanging your frail, mortal form for an existence as a vampiric parasite dependent on the life force of the mortals they claim to despise so much isn't a walk in the park. But enough people buy into that crap that we're still trying to cut off the tentacles she keeps extending into our lives in this galaxy.' He glanced at Todo. 'Has he had your little talk yet?'</p><p>Todo shook his head and sighed. 'In my own time. Try not to force the issue, Harlock. You tried it your way a couple of years ago - and remind me - how did that work out?' Harlock gave him a sour look and didn't reply.</p><p>Ali's head popped back out from around the hatchway. 'Yattaran says Tochiro can work his mojo on the tractor beam, but it's going to take a lot of power to get close enough to the planet. When we do, he says we can expect to get a hefty shove towards the rift - this place <em>really </em>wants us gone. Oh - and the little guy says to be quick about it - this place isn't draining our systems as fast as it did the SDF's, but our dark matter scoops aren't working, and what we have won't last forever.'</p><p>'Suits me,' Kei muttered. 'But we need to check out that signal. Probably best if we get that out of the way and then make sure everyone's on board their ships for the rescue?'</p><p>Harlock nodded. 'Ali - you and Yara take Todo and his cadets back to the <em>Sirius</em>. Then lock onto our location and lend a hand. Do we have a deadline?'</p><p>'An hour. Tops. So you might want to shake it off and get moving.' He leant over Bulge and offered a gloved hand. 'Come on, small fry with the silly name. Let's get you stowed away safely. Leave you out here any longer and you're likely to find yourself rehomed…'</p><p>'Ali…' The warning note in Harlock's voice was blithely ignored. Bulge however looked mildly panicked.</p><p>'What…'</p><p>'Oh. Captain has a habit of picking up waifs and strays,' Ben replied, a tiny smirk lurking at the sides of his mouth. 'And has an equally bad habit of not returning them to their natural habitat.'</p><p>'In your case,' Harlock replied smoothly, 'Be thankful it <em>wasn't </em>trap-neuter-return. And don't think I haven't had enough requests for the second of those over the years…'</p><p>Wataru laughed at his classmate's wild eyed gaze. 'Relax. They're just being idiots.' And then because, as anyone who knew the twins could attest, he and the usually snarkier Mamoru <em>weren't </em>as different in personality as they liked to pretend, added, 'mostly.'</p><p>'Shouldn't you be carpeting him for such cheekiness?' Harlock asked Todo. He tutted. 'What <em>is </em>the SDF coming to?'</p><p>'Personally,' Todo added in a sarcastic drawl that could handily stand toe to toe with anything the <em>Arcadia's </em>crew could deliver, 'I blame the parents.'</p><p>Ben smirked and patted Harlock on the shoulder. 'I think he won that one.'</p><p>'Only until I repeat it to Kei,' Harlock replied blithely. He took a good look around at those assembled before continuing. 'The fighters can take passengers if necessary. Todo - one of your team at least should come along, so if the young lady…'</p><p>'Reinhardt,' the cadet interjected.</p><p>He nodded his acknowledgement and continued: 'Cadet Reinhardt can squeeze in handily behind Kei. Luna - with Ben; we might need a medic. Anita - you're with me. The rest of you back to the ship but keep a boat prepped to pick up any survivors, if we find any.'</p><p>'Dad…'</p><p>'Not this time,' Harlock told Wataru firmly. 'Your classmate looks a lot fresher than you do. You've done your bit.' He got a short sharp nod from Todo, and turned away to forestall any further entreaties. Wataru at least wasn't as pushy as his brother. He clammed up and followed his captain into the interior of the bullet without any further comment. As the ramp hissed up, Harlock let out a small sigh, picked up only by Ben, as Kei was already heading back to her fighter, the young cadet in tow. 'Got to let them go sometime, I guess,' Ben murmured as the door snicked shut.</p><p>'Wait until you have some of your own,' Harlock replied. 'Then we'll talk over a bottle or two.' Ben gave a mock shudder. 'Perish the thought… I'm amazed <em>any </em>of my siblings made it to adulthood. I'd never wish that on anyone.'</p><p>'Set a better example,' was Harlock's pithy reply as he turned his back on the gamilan and made his way to his plane, where Anita was already waiting, having stowed her barely man-portable assault weapon in the side panel. He helped her up onto the wing and then into the space behind his seat with casual aplomb. A consummate professional on a ship of argumentative dropouts, at least he could rely on her to sort herself out quickly and efficiently. 'Before you ask,' she said as her wide, freckled features vanished behind her helmet, 'no, it doesn't get better as they get older.' She chuckled. Her son Zack was now in his thirties and his wife was about to present her with her third grandchild. Harlock smiled at her, and tried not to think too hard about the grey in her once dark hair. Anita was only a few years older than he was, he reflected, but sometimes he was hit with the occasional tough reminder of just how much time had passed since he'd taken command.</p><p><em>No-one lives forever</em>… he thought, as he thumbed the canopy closure control and flicked a series of switches on the console. <em>And nothing good ever came of denying that.</em> <em>But even the dead it seems aren't immune to that particular delusion</em>...</p><p>He sent the space wolf soaring into the sky with a roar of its engines.</p><hr/><p>The location of the missing survey crew turned out to be a storage barn on the outer edge of a deserted farmyard. It squatted between two large grain silos, its massive shuttered doors locked tight.</p><p>'Vehicle storage,' Anita said as she ducked down behind the wall they all hid behind. She handed the binocs to Ben. 'There'll be a smaller, person-sized door on the side. No-one's going to haul those doors open unless they plan on rolling out one of the auto-combines.'</p><p>'No guards visible,' Ben pointed out as he took a quick look over the wall for himself. 'But those shadows are pooling right up against the doors with the same kind of expectant intensity little Reinhardt behind me keeps staring at my arse with…'</p><p>Harlock raised a hand to forestall the indignant spluttering. 'Later, children. And cadet? Anyone who ends a sentence on a preposition isn't worth your time, regardless of how pretty they are.'</p><p>'You really think I'm pretty?' Ben shoulder bumped Harlock. 'Awww… After all these years…'</p><p>'Focus!' Kei hissed at the pair. 'Honestly. You're both old enough to know better. Ben, you're a bad influence on him…'</p><p>Ben pouted. 'Really? I'm the responsible, mature, beloved ruler of a small but happy little empire, and he's the pirate with a price on his head that would tempt anyone... ' He broke off. 'Dialheads.'</p><p>Three figures came into view, from around the side of the barn. As Harlock watched them, the normally sweet bow of his lips compressed into a stern line. 'Something's off…'</p><p>Ben, also watching closely, frowned. 'Such as?'</p><p>'The way they walk,' Kei replied.</p><p>'Telemetry's off,' Harlock continued. The furrow between his brows deepened slightly. 'I've seen it before - happens when someone's piloting a body they're not integrated into. But that doesn't make sense…'</p><p>After decades of avoiding assassination attempts and pushy reporters, Ben had learned a long time ago to process almost as fast as his pirate friend. 'There's no way in hell so many machinners could have lasted this long - even allowing for the time dilation at the edge of that rift… this planet was mostly mechanised - I saw the census statistics en route. Mamoru and Guy had seen a dozen, at most? All the power sources here are dead, so…'</p><p>'So?' Reinhardt hissed the syllable into his ear.'</p><p>'So they'd be dead as well. Which means the shadows can also take over machine bodies…'</p><p>'...and you now have to ask, why did we suddenly spot a handful of life signs way out in the opposite direction to the <em>Sirius</em>?' Harlock added grimly. Ben, Anita, Kei and Harlock all looked at each other. 'Trap.' they said, simultaneously.</p><p>'Harlock?' Reinhardt looked at each of the <em>Arcadia's </em>crew in turn, puzzled. Then she belatedly understood. 'Oh. Oh, shit…'</p><p>'Several hundred warm bodies, just waiting to be picked off,' Ben said softly. 'Hundreds - if not thousands - of hungry ghosts desperate for a new body… shadows all around us, listening, and watching everything we do. Harlock…'</p><p>'We can't risk this being a genuine hostage situation,' Harlock told him. 'Kei - you, Anita and the cadet here deal with this. Luna you'd better stay in case of casualties. Ben - with me. Unless the SDF has changed its fighters in the last few years, Reinhardt should be able to fly the space wolf once you're done.' He smiled at the unabashed delight the young woman showed at the suggestion. 'And no, cadet, you can't keep it. I don't think your superiors will take kindly to the SDF using a fighter designed by pirates.'</p><p>'Correct me if I'm wrong…' Ben leaned into Harlock over his shoulder, his cheek almost touching the pirate's, and ignored the finger flicked at his blue nose, '...but Tochiro and Harlock weren't pirates when they designed it?'</p><p>Harlock took hold of Ben's arm and began to forcibly steer him back towards the planes in question, taking care to stay out of the line of sight from the barn. 'I'd appreciate it if you didn't encourage the SDF to start looking longingly at my hardware? Especially that one… there's a gleam in those eyes that reminds me uncomfortably of Kei…'</p><p>'The look that says given half a chance she'd have them confiscated in a heartbeat on some legal pretext?' Ben laughed. 'I adore Kei - in a totally platonic kind of way - but she scares me sometimes. I understand all too well what drives her, and I'd not like to get between her and whatever she feels needs to be done. Something tells me that young lady back there has a similar need for order.'</p><p>'She was picked up by the Millennial Thieves when she was five,' Harlock told him quietly. 'What? I checked out my son's classmates, yes. There's hardly a planet out near Destiny that didn't get swept by the Machinners' harvesting ships. Between those and the plague, it's hardly surprising there's an entire generation his age suffering the consequences. Most of his class are orphans.' He paused next to the wing of his fighter. 'Ben… A couple of years ago I saw several alternate timelines to our own courtesy of the Time Castle on Herise… these kids - I recognised a few of them, but they were at least ten years younger there. Different lives, different times. Our timeline is screwed up beyond belief in places. But it's weird - no matter how far out along the rings of time you go, it's as though the same souls travel together. Different relationships sometimes...'</p><p>'Even us?' Ben grinned at him.</p><p>Harlock rolled his visible eye. 'In one of them, I think I strolled off with your ex…' he snarked. 'Regardless, I saw enough to make me think that these kids matter - or will matter, and not just to me. Some of that timeline couldn't easily come to pass in ours, but that doesn't mean that there won't be <em>something </em>in our future they'll be called upon to face.'</p><p>'You'd rush to the rescue even if there wasn't,' Ben pointed out, calling out over his shoulder as he strolled towards his own plane. 'If I hadn't seen the way you deal with anyone who pisses you off, I'd swear you were far too nice to be a pirate… But don't worry, your secret's safe with me!'</p><p>'Funny… I could say the same about you, <em>your excellency!' </em>Harlock called out. 'Is that your new Imperial Salute, your excellency?' he added innocently, smirking at the raised finger Ben flipped at him without turning round.</p><p><em>Should you bait him</em>? Tochiro murmured in his ear as he settled into his cockpit seat.</p><p>'Preventative measures,' Harlock replied as the canopy slid into position. 'If he ever loses his sense of humour, it'll be time to duck… Anything from the <em>Sirius</em>?'</p><p><em>Nothing. Not since the bullet landed</em>…</p><p>Saying nothing, Harlock gunned the fighter's engines and took to the skies, Ben's space wolf in close formation behind him.</p>
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